LIBRARY 

OF  THK 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


CONTEMPORARY   MEN 
OF    LETTERS    SERIES 

EDITED    BY 
WILLIAM    ASPENWALL    BRADLEY 


CHARLES   DUDLEY   WARNER 


CHARLES    DUDLEY 
WARNER 

BY     MRS.     JAMES    T.     FIELDS 


Contemporary 


Men  of  Letters 


NEW    YORK 
McCLURE,    PHILLIPS 
MCMIV 


CO. 


COPYRIGHT,  1904,  BY 
McCLUEE,  PHILLIPS  &  CO. 

Published,    March,    11)04,    N 


CHARLES   DUDLEY  WARNER 


C  ?  '  - 


Charles  Dudley  Warner  was  distinctively 
a  man  of  his  own  day.  He  was  enlisted 
for  the  men  and  women  who  made  his 
world.  He  knew  the  past,  for  he  was  a 
man  of  letters;  the  future  he  did  not 
know;  he  was  content  to  leave  that  to  the 
Father  of  us  all ;  the  present  was  his  field. 
Warner's  acceptation  of  the  present  and 
the  way  he  lived  for  it  was  a  peculiar  and 
distinguishing  gift.  Planting  his  feet 
firmly  on  the  knowledge  he  never  ceased 
to  acquire,  he  was  ready  to  speak  at  call 
before  any  assembly  when  he  was  invited, 
or  to  hold  his  part  in  any  conversation. 
Never  dull,  never  insistent,  but  grace 
fully,  helpfully,  joyously  furthering  the 
[3] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ends  of  any  interesting  occasion  whatever 
it  might  be.  The  generosity  of  his  na 
ture  and  a  certain  self-possession  enabled 
him  to  be  profoundly  social.  There  was 
no  day,  no  hour,  no  moment,  no  thing 
which  he  would  not  give,  if  he  could,  to  a 
fellow-mortal  who  needed  his  presence  or 
his  help.  That  the  demand  was  import 
ant  to  some  one  else  made  it  important 
enough  for  him  to  consider.  This  wide 
sympathy  fitted  him  to  be  what  he  became 
—a  newspaper  editor  of  distinction,  a 
writer  of  many  books,  primarily  for  his 
contemporaries,  but  so  well  done  that  some 
of  his  published  work  will  live  beyond  his 
time. 

He  could  say  "no"  with  the  best,  yet  it 
would  be  after  considering  if  he  might  not 
[4] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
say  "yes."  His  large  sympathy  made 
him  a  large  man  among  his  fellows.  He 
pursued  his  ends  without  let  or  hindrance, 
being  concentrated  on  the  manner  of 
working  which  was  natural  to  him.  The 
final  means  not  only  of  his  progress,  but 
of  all  real  progress,  he  believed  to  be 
literature,  or  the  power  of  making  perma 
nent  what  is  worthy. 

His  first  book,  when  a  mere  boy,  was  a 
compilation  called  "A  Book  of  Eloquence 
for  Students."  His  second  was  pub 
lished  quite  twenty  years  later,  a  delight 
ful  and  amusing  home  picture  called  "My 
Summer  in  a  Garden" ;  but  before,  behind, 
and  beyond  the  yearly  books  which  ensued 
upon  the  success  of  his  "Garden"  was 
the  never-ceasing  flow  of  newspaper  and 
[5] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

magazine  writing,  wherein  he  was  steadily 
using  the  power  that  was  his  for  the  pub 
lic  good. 

Charles  Dudley  Warner  was  born  in 
Plainfield,  Massachusetts,  September  12, 
1829,  a  country  boy  without  wealth  or  spe 
cial  opportunity.  His  opportunity  was 
always  his  own  brain,  his  own  heart,  his 
own  steady-growing  virtue.  His  father 
died  a  young  man,  thirty-six  years  old,  and 
when  Charles  was  only  five;  there  was  a 
brother  George,  one  year  old,  and  these 
two  little  boys,  with  their  mother,  who 
came  from  Cazenovia,  New  York,  lived 
for  three  lonely  years  on  their  cold  up 
land  farm  of  two  hundred  acres,  "blown 
by  wind  and  beaten  by  shower,"  and 
[6] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

nearly  buried  by  the  snows  of  winter. 
For  the  farm  was  the  only  inheritance 
of  Charles's  father,  whose  brother  and 
sisters  each  and  all  went  westward,  leav 
ing  the  land  to  him,  Justus  by  name,  to 
do  what  he  could  with  the  unreward 
ing  soil.  Plainfield  was  not  a  town  to 
be  judged  by  the  standards  of  some 
country  towns  to-day;  that  and  Cum- 
mington,  its  neighbor,  where  William 
Cullen  Bryant  was  born ;  Ashfield,  doubt 
less,  and  many  another  township  of  that 
part  of  New  England,  were  settled  by  de 
scendants  of  the  Mayflower  immigrants, 
or  from  the  colony  which  moved  to  Hart 
ford  from  Cambridge  in  1636,  under  their 
leader,  Thomas  Hooker,  and  afterward 
left  Connecticut  for  a  less-restricted  re- 
[7] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ligious  atmosphere.  Warner's  paternal 
ancestor  was  one  of  the  Connecticut  col 
ony  who  seceded,  probably  with  compan 
ions,  and  came  northward.  He  must 
have  been  pathetically  ignorant  of  New 
England  hill-country  climate  to  have 
bought  a  farm  2,200  feet  above  the  sea 
upon  which  to  support  a  family  and 
bequeath  its  storms  and  its  stones  to 
his  descendants  forever.  But  the  land 
may  have  been  allotted,  as  was  some 
times  done  in  those  early  days,  to  desira 
ble  settlers. 

Warner's  mother  descended  from  one 
of  the  voyagers  in  the  Mayflower,  Cooke, 
whose  name  is  duly  inscribed  in  the 
Plymouth  records.  Her  people  came 
first  to  live  in  a  town  adjacent  to  Plain- 
[8] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

field,  Hawley,  and  removed  to  Cazenovia 
while  Charles's  mother  was  a  little  girl. 
It  was  natural  enough  that  affectionate 
connections  once  made  between  the  two 
families  should  have  grown  stronger 
rather  than  weaker  upon  the  removal 
of  one  of  the  families  to  Cazenovia. 
Certain  it  is  that  Justus  Warner  went 
thither  to  seek  his  wife  Sylvia  (Rus 
sell  Hitchcock),  and  to  bring  her  back 
to  the  familiar  vicinity  from  which  her 
parents'  removal  seemed  to  have  trans 
planted  her;  but  the  "little  god"  is  ever  at 
his  work,  and  Charles  was  to  be  born  in 
Plainfield,  one  mile  from  the  old  church 
of  his  parents  and  grandparents.  Doubt 
less  at  the  sad  moment  of  her  young  hus 
band's  death  the  little  boy  Charles  often 
[9] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
seemed  to  his  mother  "a  great  help,"  but 
at  the  age  of  five  this  help  must  naturally 
be  taken  in  a  moral  sense.  The  labour  on 
the  farm  must  be  performed  by  hired 
men;  and  while  he  was  a  cheerful,  loving, 
intelligent  child  and  a  joy  to  his  mother's 
heart,  the  burdens  of  unusual  business  and 
unremunerative  farming  must  often  have 
weighed  upon  her  mind.  We  cannot 
doubt  that  her  boy  continually  surprised 
her  by  his  sympathetic  insight  and  clever 
ness,  but  five  years  have  their  limitations. 
She  went  on  bravely,  wishing  to  keep  her 
children  with  her,  until  Charles  was  eight 
years  old  and  his  brother  four,  then,  yield 
ing  to  the  kind  suggestions  of  relatives 
and  friends,  she  left  her  home  forever. 
In  the  town  of  Charlemont,  eight  miles 
[10] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
from  Plainfield,  on  the  Deerfield  River, 
lived  an  intelligent  man,  a  farmer,  Jonas 
Patch  by  name,  a  connection  of  the  family 
who  was  willing  to  become  Charles's 
guardian.  It  was  a  necessity  that  the 
boy  should  now  go  to  school  and  begin 
a  new  life.  The  reasons  for  the  change 
were  sufficient,  the  farm  was  sold  and  a 
share  of  the  money  that  came  from  it  was 
carefully  husbanded  for  Charles's  educa 
tion,  because  his  father's  latest  words  were 
that  "Charles  must  go  to  college." 

Plainfield  was  not  a  place  of  ordinary 
farming  people,  as  we  have  already  inti 
mated.  The  minister  of  the  old  Presby 
terian  church,  Parson  Hallock,  was  a  man 
of  intellect  and  learning  and  set  the  pace. 
Justus  Warner,  and  his  father  before  him, 
[11] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

owned  and  read  good  books,  and  the  peo 
ple  met  and  talked  together  as  did  the 
people  described  by  Mrs.  Stowe.  Charles 
had  always  found  standard  English  books 
on  shelves  where  he  could  reach  them; 
there  was  a  fine  portrait  of  his  father 
painted  in  Boston  by  a  good  artist,  "in  a 
dress  which  seemed  elegant,"  hanging  on 
the  walls.  His  father  was  evidently  a 
man  of  knowledge  and  promise.  Thus 
his  mother's  happy  associations  belonged 
to  Plainfield,  all  her  young  hopes  and  am 
bitions  of  early  married  life  were  centred 
there,  and,  in  leaving  Plainfield  for 
Charlemont,  she  left  everything  that  was 
dear  to  her  except  her  boys,  and  upon 
them  her  life,  she  felt,  should  now  be  con 
centrated. 

[12] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
On  arriving  at  Charlemont,  Jonas 
Patch,  a  man  "of  excellent  standing  and 
influence  in  the  community, "  gladly  re 
ceived  the  oldest  boy  and  brought  the  best 
possible  influences  to  bear  upon  him. 
Many  years  after  Charles's  first  literary 
successes  and  travels  abroad,  in  his  ma 
turity,  it  seems  to  have  occurred  to  him 
how  good  it  might  be  for  future  boys  and 
future  guardians,  as  well  as  how  amusing 
for  the  world  in  general,  to  read  a  boy's 
true  experiences  between  the  ages  of  eight 
and  twelve,  on  a  New  England  farm. 
The  integrity  of  his  character  gave  him 
the  very  rare  power  of  telling  the  exact 
truth  regarding  his  own  life.  The  books 
of  Warner  are  real  autobiography. 
Whatever  the  subject  may  be  of  which  he 
[13] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

treats,  it  is  his  own  experience  of  that  sub 
ject.  His  life  was  not  eventful,  in  the 
usual  meaning  of  that  term,  but  he  lived 
and  felt  genuinely  always,  could  and 
would  speak  the  truth,  and  enjoyed  every 
hour  like  a  true  Christian. 

In  1877  he  published  "Being  a  Boy,"  a 
book  giving  a  delightful  picture  of  his  ex 
periences  on  Jonas  Patch's  farm.  He 
says:  "The  rural  life  described  is  that  of 
New  England  between  1830  and  1850,  in 
a  period  of  darkness  before  the  use  of 
lucifer  matches.  ...  I  invented  noth 
ing — not  an  adventure,  not  a  scene,  not  an 
emotion.  I  know  from  observation  how 
difficult  it  is  for  an  adult  to  write  about 
childhood.  Invention  is  apt  to  supply  de 
tails  that  memory  does  not  carry."  Not 
[14] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

with  Warner  when  he  undertakes  to  tell  a 
true  story !  Here  we  have  an  unvarnished 
picture  of  the  boy,  "the  father  of  the 


man." 


"One  of  the  best  things  in  the  world  to 
be  is  a  boy,"  he  says;  "it  requires  no  ex 
perience,  though  it  needs  some  practice  to 
be  a  good  one.  .  .  .  The  proudest  day 
of  my  life  was  one  day  when  I  rode  on  the 
neap  of  the  cart,  and  drove  the  oxen  all 
alone,  with  a  load  of  apples,  to  the  cider 
mill.  I  was  so  little  that  it  was  a  wonder 
that  I  did  not  fall  off  and  get  under  the 
broad  wheels.  Nothing  could  make  a 
boy,  who  cared  anything  for  his  appear 
ance,  feel  flatter  than  to  be  run  over  by 
the  broad  tire  of  a  cart-wheel.  But  I 
never  heard  of  one  who  was,  and  I  don't 
[15] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
believe  one  ever  will  be.  ...  There  are 
so  many  bright  spots  in  the  life  of  a  farm- 
boy  that  I  sometimes  think  I  should  like 
to  live  the  life  over  again;  I  should  be  al 
most  willing  to  be  a  girl  if  it  were  not  for 
the  chores.  ...  I  have  often  thought 
it  fortunate  that  the  amount  of  noise  in  a 
boy  does  not  increase  in  proportion  to  his 
age;  if  it  did  the  world  could  not  contain 
it."  .  .  . 

He  runs  on  in  this  pleasant  way,  be 
traying  his  own  nature  at  every  point. 
Once  he  reminds  us  of  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan,  whose  wit  held  London  on  the 
alert,  yet  wrote:  "Sit  still,  think,  and  do 
nothing."  Warner  says:  "A  boy  can 
stand  on  one  leg  as  well  as  a  Holland 
stork.  .  .  .  If  he  had  his  way,  he  would 
[16] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
do  nothing  in  a  hurry ;  he  likes  to  stop  and 
think  about  things,  and  enjoy  his  work  as 
he  goes  along." 

Meanwhile  the  years  were  slipping 
away  and  the  time  approaching  when  an 
other  school  must  be  found  for  a  boy 
whose  tastes  were  proved  to  be  distinctly 
scholarly.  "He  tells  at  home  that  he  has 
seen  the  most  wonderful  book  that  ever 
was,  and  a  big  boy  has  promised  to  lend 
it  to  him.  'Is  it  a  true  book,  John?'  asked 
the  grandmother;  'because  if  it  isn't  true, 
it  is  the  worst  thing  that  a  boy  can  read.' 
.  .  .  John  cannot  answer  as  to  the  truth 
of  the  book,  and  so  does  not  bring  it  into 
the  house,  but  he  borrows  it,  nevertheless, 
and  conceals  it  in  the  barn,  and,  lying  in 
the  hay-mow,  is  lost  in  its  enchantments 
[17] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

many  an  odd  hour  when  he  is  supposed  to 
be  doing  chores.  There  were  no  chores  in 
the  *  Arabian  Nights';  the  boy  there  had 
but  to  rub  the  ring  and  summon  a  genie 
who  would  feed  the  calves  and  pick  up 
chips  and  bring  in  wood  in  a  minute.  It 
was  through  this  emblazoned  portal  that 
the  boy  walked  into  the  world  of  books, 
which  he  soon  found  was  larger  than  his 
own,  and  filled  with  people  he  longed  to 
know." 

When  Charles  was  twelve  came  the 
next  important  step  in  his  life.  His 
mother's  brother,  in  Cazenovia,  took  the 
family  back  to  that  pleasant  town,  where 
Charles  was  soon  placed  in  the  Methodist 
Seminary,  a  school  of  note  in  that  part 
of  the  country.  He  did  not  become  a 
[18] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Methodist — his  family  were  all  Presby 
terians — and  possibly  he  did  not  give 
much  thought  to  the  subject.  In  later 
years  he  liked  to  go  to  the  Episcopal 
Church,  especially  that  of  Dr.  Rainsford 
in  New  York;  when  in  Hartford  his 
friendship  for  Mr.  Twichell  would  not 
allow  him  to  think  of  going  elsewhere 
than  to  Mr.  TwichelFs  church.  It  was 
not  long  before  he  was  talked  of  as  the 
first  boy  in  his  class,  and  on  commence 
ment  day  he  carried  off  the  chief  prize. 
The  "Oneida  Conference  Seminary,"  for 
such  it  was  called,  was  a  co-educational 
school,  and  it  is  probable  that  a  certain 
power  which  he  possessed,  peculiarly,  of 
making  friendship  with  women  and  en 
joying  their  society  in  what  would  seem  a 
[19] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
perfectly  natural  way  (if  it  were  oftener 
seen  in  the  world),  may  have  been  ac 
quired  there.  It  was  on  the  graduating 
day  of  his  class  when  it  was  noised  abroad 
that  a  handsome  lad,  Warner,  was  to 
make  the  prize  address,  that  he  was  first 
seen  by  a  little  girl,  Susan  Lee,  whom  he 
afterward  married. 

Meantime  Charles  kept  steadily  at 
other  work  beside  his  books — else  the 
small  patrimony  might  not  have  held 
out  for  college.  He  associated  him 
self  with  the  printing  office  of  the  local 
paper ;  then  he  went  into  a  book-store ;  and 
finally  served  in  the  post-office  as  a  clerk. 
He  must  have  been  studying  all  the  time, 
for  when  he  found  himself  able  to  go  to 
college  he  entered  as  sophomore  at  Ham- 
[20] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ilton,  in  the  town  of  Clinton.  Thence  he 
graduated  with  a  reputation  for  literary 
acquirements  in  1851.  One  other  experi 
ence  was  his  in  the  way  of  education,  prob 
ably  preceding  the  glorious  days  of  the 
seminary.  He  had  an  aunt  who  was  a 
Quaker,  who  lived  in  the  town  of  De  Ruy- 
ter,  where  there  was  a  school  of  very  high 
repute.  Charles  was  invited  by  this  aunt 
to  make  her  a  long  visit  and  attend  the 
De  Ruyter  school.  It  was  an  invitation 
not  to  be  resisted. 

Here  Charles  evidently  enjoyed  him 
self  a  great  deal,  one  of  his  chief  pleasures 
being  that  of  finding  his  lifelong  friend, 
a  boy  at  the  same  school,  Wirt  Dexter. 
When,  after  this,  and  the  college  days  at 
Hamilton  being  ended  (he  entered  Ham- 
[21] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ilton  at  nineteen) ,  he  found  himself  a  man 
of  twenty-one,  with  the  problem  still  un 
settled,  the  problem  which  confronts  every 
young  man:  "What  shall  I  do  with  my 
talents,  which  way  shall  I  turn?"  With 
some  men,  especially  if  they  are  to  be 
artists  of  any  kind,  with  pen  or  pencil, 
this  season  may  be  lingering  and  painful, 
but  Warner,  having  no  one  but  himself  to 
lean  upon  and  being  confirmed  in  his  de 
sire  to  study  law,  needed  only  to  settle 
with  himself  as  to  ways  and  means  to  this 
end.  Whatever  he  might  one  day  accom 
plish  in  the  field  of  letters,  he  knew  there 
was  no  possibility  of  maintaining  himself 
properly  at  first  in  this  career,  beside  he 
needed  the  equipment  of  the  law,  the  defi 
nite  knowledge  which  a  profession  brings. 
[22] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

Unhappily  at  this  juncture  his  health 
failed,  but  he  secured  a  position  in  an  en 
gineering  corps  surveying  for  railroads  in 
the  State  of  Missouri.  Two  years  in  the 
open  restored  him  entirely.  His  clear 
blue  eyes  and  his  fresh  complexion  took 
on  their  wonted  look  of  health  once  more, 
and  receiving  an  invitation  at  this  junc 
ture  from  one  of  his  college  friends  in 
Philadelphia,  Charles  went  there  at  once 
to  look  about  him.  The  grandfather  of 
this  friend  was  a  conveyancer,  and  urged 
Charles  to  begin  his  studies  in  law 
straightway,  and  come  as  soon  as  possi 
ble  into  his  office. 

Young  Warner  applied  himself  to  the 
work  with  unremitting  energy,  encour 
aged  and  helped  on  by  his  generous 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

friends,  and  the  day  he  began  to  practice 
he  married  Susan  Lee.  Their  marriage 
took  place  in  the  year  1856.  He  studied 
law  faithfully,  but  the  practice  of  the  pro 
fession  never  agreed  with  him.  He  found 
it  very  harassing.  He  did  not  think  of 
settling  in  Chicago,  but  later  while  on 
a  journey  another  college  friend  per 
suaded  him  to  go  into  business  there  with 
him,  and  the  sign  Davenport  &  Warner 
was  very  soon  put  up.  He  took  a  mod 
est  house,  furnished  it  with  the  great 
est  simplicity  and  taste,  and  here  his 
delightful  home  life  began.  He  had 
a  few  friends  in  Chicago  to  start  with, 
Wirt  Dexter  among  others,  and  proba 
bly  the  most  intimate.  Unhappily  the 
hard  times  of  1856,  1857,  and  1858  are 
[24] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
still  rememberable,  and  Warner  did  not 
immediately  succeed  to  his  liking  in  those 
days  of  peculiar  difficulty  for  young  pro 
fessional  men. 


[25] 


II 

At  this  time  one  of  his  Eastern  friends, 
Mr.  Joseph  R.  Hawley,  had  become  the 
editor  of  a  Republican  paper  just  started 
in  Hartford,  Conn.,  The  Press.  He 
wished  Charles  Warner  to  assist  him  in 
the  editorship,  and  went  to  Chicago  to  try 
to  induce  him  to  return  to  the  East  and  to 
live  in  Hartford.  Small  time  was  lost  in 
coming  to  a  decision,  but  what  could  they 
do  with  the  pleasant  house?  At  that  mo 
ment  Wirt  Dexter  determined  to  marry 
and  wanted  a  place  to  live.  The  lease 
was  assumed  by  him,  but  how  about  the 
furnishings?  "Oh,"  said  Warner,  "I  paid 
just  so  many  hundred  dollars  for  every 
thing  in  this  house,  and  you  shall  have  it 
[261 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

all  for  that  if  you  will."  The  money  was 
paid,  the  Warners  went  to  Hartford;  the 
following  year  General  Hawley  was 
called  to  the  war  and  Warner  took  the  sole 
editorship  of  The  Evening  Press.  He 
would  have  gone  to  the  war  himself  ex 
cept  for  his  extreme  short-sightedness, 
which  forced  him  to  stay  at  home  and 
serve  the  country  by  his  pen.  This 
service  he  never  quitted.  After  the  war 
he  and  his  friend  were  able  to  buy  the 
Hartford  Courant,  and  consolidate  the 
two  papers,  making  a  powerful  journal 
which  has  always  held  its  own  and  some 
thing  more.  It  would  be  deeply  interest 
ing  to  follow  his  war  papers  from  day  to 
day,  but  we  can  only  refer  to  them  here. 
One  summer  when  the  hearts  of  men  were 
[27] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

very  low  Warner  said:  "Look  here,  this 
will  never  do ;  suppose  I  write  a  few  edito 
rials  during  these  weeks  of  August  which 
shall  give  people  something  to  laugh  about 
and  something  to  think  about  that  is  cheer 
ful?  He  went  to  his  desk  and  every 
week  printed  one  of  the  editorials  after 
ward  put  together  in  the  book  called  "My 
Summer  in  a  Garden,"  and  published  by 
Fields  &  Osgood  in  1870.  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  wrote  an  introductory  letter  say 
ing:  "In  our  feverish  days,  it  is  a  sign  of 
health  or  of  convalescence  that  men  love 
gentle  pleasure.  .  .  .  The  love  of  rural 
life,  the  habit  of  finding  enjoyment  in 
familiar  things  ...  is  worth  a  thou 
sand  fortunes  of  money  or  its  equivalent." 
The  editorials,  and  later  the  book, 
[28] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
gained  at  once  a  happy  fame.  The  fruit 
of  this  garden  was  unexpected.  Many  a 
heart  was  soothed  and  stimulated  by  it. 
The  influence  upon  the  writer  was  no  less 
wholesome.  He  returns  to  his  boyish 
habits:  "I  like  to  go  into  the  garden,"  he 
says,  "these  warm  latter  days  and  muse. 
To  muse  is  to  sit  in  the  sun  and  not  think 
of  anything!"  The  wit  and  humour  of 
the  pages  are  exquisite,  and  so  are  the  de 
lightful  glimpses  of  home-life,  which  with 
him  never  lost  its  savour.  Polly  and  he 
understood  one  another  too  well  to  be  dis 
turbed  by  shafts  of  fun  launched  at  each 
other's  expense.  "What  might  have  be 
come  of  the  garden,  if  Polly's  advice  had 
been  followed,  a  good  Providence  only 
knows;  but  I  never  worked  there  without 
[29] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
a  consciousness  that  she  might  at  any  mo 
ment  come  down  the  walk,  under  the 
grape -arbour,  bestowing  glances  of  ap 
proval,  that  were  none  the  worse  for  not 
being  critical.  ...  It  was  this  bright 
presence  that  filled  the  garden,  as  it  did 
the  summer,  with  light."  .  .  . 

The  combination  of  work  and  play  to 
be  found  in  his  garden,  as  in  every  true 
garden,  fills  the  reader  with  sympathetic 
pleasure.  * 'Hoeing  on  a  bright  soft  May 
day,  when  you  are  not  obliged  to,  is  nearly 
equal  to  the  delight  of  going  trouting." 
His  fun  about  weeding  seems  truly  im 
mortal.  "Pusley"  received  its  death 
blow  in  spite  of  a  letter  entreating  him  to 
pause  because  a  certain  lady's  husband 
had  been  so  inflamed  with  zeal  that  in  her 
[30] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
absence  "he  had  rooted  up  all  her  beds 
of  portulaca  (a  sort  of  cousin  of  the  pot 
weed),  and  utterly  cast  it  out."  The 
table  of  the  garden's  profit  and  loss  is  very 
amusing.  He  says:  "I  have  tried  to  make 
the  table  so  as  to  satisfy  the  income-tax 
collector.  ...  I  have  had  some  diffi 
culty  in  fixing  the  rate  of  my  own  wages. 
It  was  the  first  time  that  I  had  an  oppor 
tunity  of  paying  what  I  thought  labour 
was  worth.  ...  I  figured  it  right 
down  to  European  prices,  seventeen  cents 
a  day  for  unskilled  labour.  Of  course,  I 
boarded  myself." 

The  years  of  our  great  war  were  stimu 
lating  and  very  hard-working  years  for  the 
young  editor.     Those  who  have  watched 
him  at  his  desk  say  it  was  extraordinary 
[31] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
to  see  with  what  apparent  ease  he  turned 
off  long  and  serious  pieces  of  writing. 
When  he  determined  that  a  thing  was  to 
be  done,  he  went  without  hesitation  or  de 
lay  to  his  writing,  and  while  another  man 
would  be  considering  the  topic,  he  would 
have  worked  it  out  pen  in  hand;  but  with 
the  next  decade  his  books  began  to  appear 
and  he  was  no  longer  so  closely  tied  to  his 
journalism.  His  interest  in  The  C  our  ant 
was  as  great  as  ever.  He  had  unremit 
ting  editorial  oversight,  but  he  no  longer 
filled  the  whole  editorial  page,  on  occasion 
of  necessity,  by  his  own  pen. 

The  war  having  ended  and  his  work 
having  settled  into  more  definite  shape,  he 
went  with  his  wife  for  their  first  jour 
ney  to  Europe.     He  needed  change  and 
[32] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
repose.  His  editorials  went  on  continu 
ously,  as  if  he  were  at  home,  but  the  sub 
jects  differed,  and  the  papers  were  to  be 
gathered  into  books.  In  the  year  1872 
he  published  two  volumes — one  "Saunter- 
ings,"  recording  his  first  experiences  and 
impressions  in  Europe;  the  other  "Back- 
Log  Studies,"  a  delightful  series  of  essays 
on  home-life  written  after  his  return. 

"Back-Log  Studies"  invites  us  into  his 
home  with  the  easy  cordiality  and  true  hos 
pitality  which  were  his  own.  The  lesson 
to  Peter,  when  the  great  sheet  knit  at  the 
four  corners  was  let  down  containing  all 
manner  of  birds  and  beasts  and  he  was 
commanded  to  call  nothing  common,  was 
never  needed  by  Warner's  catholic  mind 
and  heart.  In  none  of  his  books  does 
[33] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
one  see  this  so  clearly,  nor  indeed  do 
we  anywhere  find  his  wit  more  ex 
quisite,  his  native  sunshine  more  at 
large  than  between  these  covers.  He 
says:  "A  wood  fire  on  the  hearth  is  a 
kindler  of  the  domestic  virtues."  The 
whole  book  is  a  kind  of  apotheosis  of 
home,  portraying  his  modest  ideal  of  what 
almost  every  happy  pair  can  attain  who 
are  not  stricken  too  deeply  by  discourage 
ments  and  woes.  Speaking  of  the  world 
generally  as  being  "a  little  off  the  track," 
he  says:  "Our  American  economy  leaves 
no  place  for  amusements;  we  merely  add 
them  to  the  burden  of  a  life  already  full" ; 
and  speaking  of  building  the  house  he 
continues:  "It  took  the  race  ages  to  build 
dwellings  that  would  keep  out  rain ;  it  has 
[34] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

taken  longer  to  build  houses  airtight,  but 
we  are  on  the  eve  of  success.  We  are 
only  foiled  by  the  ill-fitting,  insincere 
work  of  the  builders,  who  build  for  a  day 
and  charge  for  all  time."  The  talk  be 
came  very  wise  and  pleasant  by  that  fire 
side  both  in  reality  and  in  the  book.  As 
to  the  latter  it  would  be  hard  to  find  one 
pleasanter  to  read  aloud  for  a  small  group 
of  friends  on  a  rainy  day,  who  like  the 
kind  of  writing  that  suggests  conversa 
tion  and  music  and  friendly  interruptions.  « 
"Daylight  disenchants,"  he  says,  "it  draws 
one  from  the  fireside  and  dissipates  the  idle 
illusions  of  conversation,  except  under  cer 
tain  conditions.  Let  us  say  these  condi 
tions  are:  A  house  in  the  country,  with 
some  forest-trees  near  and  a  few  ever- 
[35] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
greens,  ...  a  snowstorm  beginning 
out  of  a  dark  sky,  falling  in  a  soft  pro 
fusion  that  fills  all  the  air.  .  .  .  Noth 
ing  makes  us  feel  at  home  like  a  great 
snowstorm.  ...  In  point  of  pure 
enjoyment,  with  an  intellectual  sparkle 
in  it,  I  suppose  that  no  luxurious  loung 
ing  on  tropical  isles,  set  in  tropical  seas, 
compares  with  the  positive  happiness  one 
may  have  before  a  great  wood  fire  (not 
two  sticks  laid  crossways  in  a  grate)  with 
a  veritable  New  England  winter  raging 
outside.  In  order  to  get  the  highest  en 
joyment,  the  faculties  must  be  alert  and 
not  be  lulled  into  a  mere  recipient  dul- 
ness."  ...  It  was  a  late  spring  that 
year.  "There  was  a  popular  longing 
for  spring  that  was  almost  a  prayer. 
[36] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Easter  was  set  a  week  earlier  than  the 
year  before,  but  nothing  seemed  to  do 
any  good.  We  agreed,  however,  that, 
but  for  disappointed  expectations  and  the 
prospect  of  late  lettuce  and  peas,  we  were 
gaining  by  the  fire  as  much  as  we  were 
losing  by  the  frost."  .  .  . 

The  spirit  of  the  book  may  be  gathered 
from  these  brief  passages,  but  for  the 
charming  humour  of  it  one  must  go  to  the 
pages  themselves.  We  must  write  of 
Warner  as  a  man,  and  of  his  books  only  as  • 
they  express  his  nature  and  make  evident 
the  settled  purposes  of  his  life;  and  so  we 
deny  ourselves  longer  quotations.  "Back- 
Log  Studies"  has  a  peculiar  charm  be 
cause  it  marks  a  period  in  a  beneficent  ex 
istence  when  a  man  of  thoughtful  mind 
[37] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

looks  about  him  and  plants  his  feet  as  he 
does  his  trees  among  those  who  are  to 
make  his  world,  and  recognises  his  home 
as  the  foundation  of  true  work  and  devel 
opment. 

One  of  the  Warners'  near  neighbours 
was  Mr.  S.  L.  Clemens  (Mark  Twain), 
and  in  1873  the  two  authors  ventured  upon 
what  is  always  a  more  or  less  unsatisfac 
tory  scheme,  writing  a  book  together.  It 
was  a  satire  called  "The  Gilded  Age."  In 
the  preface  the  authors  say,  over  their  sig 
natures,  that  every  chapter  was  written 
jointly,  the  idea  being  to  portray  pecu 
liarities  developed  in  our  country  by  the 
sudden  acquisition  of  great  wealth  and  the 
opening  up  of  vast  areas  and  new  schemes 
suggested  by  new  opportunities.  With 
[38] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

all  its  ingenuities  and  cleverness,  the  book 
can  hardly  be  called  a  literary  success.  A 
one-man  power  is  always  a  necessity  for 
true  success,  whether  in  the  conception 
and  execution  of  a  book  or  in  the  govern 
ment  of  the  police  of  cities.  Very  close 
relations  grew  up  between  the  two  fam 
ilies,  and  in  a  note  from  Mr.  Clemens  af 
ter  Warner's  death  he  says,  in  reply  to  an 
appeal  to  him  for  letters:  "Alas,  and  alas, 
we  are  packed  for  Italy,  and  all  valued 
letters  are  packed  and  stored  with  the 
silver  and  hymn-books.  There  were  not 
many,  of  course,  we  being  near  neigh 
bours,  and  communicating  mainly  by 
mouth.  I  wish  I  could  send  you  War 
ner's  Invocation  to  L.  on  St.  Valentine's 
morning,  beginning: 

[39] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

"  Come  out  into  the  slush,  dear, 
In  your  gracious  galoshes  shod/' 

but  that  is  packed,  too.  I  am  of  no  use  in 
reminiscing — my  memory  is  worthless. 
Warner  was  always  saying  brilliant 
things,  felicitous  things,  but  one  can't 
carry  them  in  the  mind  in  their  exact  lan 
guage,  and  without  that  their  glory  is 
gone.  But  there  is  one  remark — not 
made  by  Warner — which  we  do  not  for 
get.  You  will  note  in  it  the  sunshine 
shed  by  his  personality.  One  day  a  young 
friend  of  ours  came  in  with  a  fine  light  in 
her  eye,  and  said:  'I've  just  had  a  good- 
morning  from  Mr.  Warner,  and  I'm  a 
happy  girl  for  the  day !' ' 

Mrs.  Stowe  was  still  living  at  that  time 
and  was  a  near  neighbour  also  and  most 
[40] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

honoured  guest,  roaming  at  will  in  and 
out  of  the  Warners'  house,  and  in  her 
latest  age  seating  herself  at  the  piano, 
playing  and  singing  sometimes  in  her  own 
weird  fashion  to  the  empty  air. 

The  Reverend  Joseph  Twichell  was  one 
of  Warner's  dearest  Hartford  friends. 
Mr.  Twichell  was  so  often  introduced  into 
Warner's  conversation  that  many  persons 
felt  they  had  a  certain  acquaintance  and 
wished  they  knew  him  better.  The  great 
preacher  has  lately  written  of  his  friend: 
"His  humour  was  in  all  circumstances 
unforced,  seeming  to  be  unintended — the 
simply  natural  expression  of  the  man.  In 
the  main  it  was  of  a  playful  quality,  yet 
it  could,  too,  on  occasion,  take  on  edge. 
When  the  late  war  with  Spain  was  de- 
[41] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

clared,  which  he  held  to  have  been  avoid 
able  and  earnestly  deprecated,  coming  one 
Sunday  out  of  church,  after  hearing  a  ser 
mon  in  which  the  preacher — who  it  may  as 
well  be  owned  was  the  present  writer — 
had  discoursed  on  war  in  the  light  of  its 
incidental  benefits,  he  said  he  had  felt  like 
rising  in  his  place  in  the  congregation  and 
offering  the  motion:  'That,  in  consonance 
with  the  views  just  presented,  we  post 
pone  the  Christian  religion  to  a  more  con 
venient  season.'  .  .  .  When  he  first 
came  to  the  notice  of  the  general  public  as 
a  writer  and  humourist,  he  was  often 
spoken  of  as  a  new  Charles  Lamb.  This 
he  laughed  at.  ...  Yet,  notwithstand 
ing  his  disclaimer  ...  in  the  genial, 
gentle  feeling  for  humanity,  characteris- 
[42] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

tic  of  his  humour,  Charles  Dudley  War 
ner  was  certainly  a  spiritual  brother  of 
Charles  Lamb.  .  .  .  But  his  humour 
was  always  a  more  observable  feature  of 
his  speech  than  of  his  writing.  Nowhere 
else  did  it  come  so  fully  out  as  in  his  com 
mon  talk.  .  .  .  While  on  a  visit  to  the 
Bermudas,  as  in  our  rambles  up  and  down 
we  passed  the  little  single-room  school- 
houses  that  are  frequent  in  those  islands, 
Warner,  who  was  ever  on  the  sociological 
quest,  was  quite  apt  to  step  in,  and  with 
apologies  for  interruption,  interview  the 
teachers,  man  or  woman,  black  or  white, 
and,  after  introductory  statistical  in 
quiries,  draw  out  the  teacher's  opinions  on 
educational  and  other  matters.  On  vari 
ous  such  occasions,  at  his  suggestion, 
[43] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

classes  were  called  up  to  recite  before  him, 
and  to  them  he  propounded  questions, 
sometimes  outside  the  province  of  the  sub 
ject  of  their  recitation,  obtaining,  in  in 
stances,  answers  remarkable  and  exceed 
ingly  entertaining.  It  was  all  done  in  a 
manner  of  interest  and  friendliness  which 
was,  indeed,  unfeigned,  and  with  an  entire 
gravity  of  demeanour  which  the  bystander 
found  it  extremely  difficult  to  preserve. 
.  .  .  But  that  fashion  of  gleaning  was 
one  of  his  ways,  and  reveals  a  source  of 
the  material  of  humour  with  which  he  was 
supplied;  it  hints  the  secret,  too,  of  the 
human  sympathy  with  which  his  humour 
was  pervaded.  .  .  .  For  more  than 
thirty  years  Charles  Dudley  Warner  was 
my  neighbour  and  friend.  The  humour, 
[44] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
softly  radiant,  refined  .  .  .  that  was 
so  distinct  a  feature  of  his  mind  and  utter 
ance,  was  memorably  to  me  one  of  the  re 
freshments  that  went  with  his  dear  com 
pany  for  all  that  time.  But  though  the 
impression  of  it  vividly  remains,  and  can 
not  but  be  abiding,  in  trying  to  convey 
that  impression,  far  fewer  things  to  the 
purpose  than  I  should  have  expected  re 
turn  to  me  in  shape  to  tell."  .  .  . 

While  his  friendships  were  growing 
more  numerous,  deeper,  and  stronger  at 
home,  Warner's  life  was  widening  in  its 
reach.  The  newspaper  and  his  books 
were  anchors  holding  him  to  Hartford 
perpetually,  but  he  was  aware  that  his 
work  would  be  enriched  by  a  wider  knowl 
edge  of  the  world  and  by  the  rest  which 
[45] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
comes  with  change.  Therefore,  in  the 
thirty  years  of  life  between  1870  and 
1900,  the  year  of  his  death,  Warner  made 
five  journeys  to  Europe,  involving  seven 
years  of  absence.  These  five  absences 
yielded  good  literary  fruit  not  alone  di 
rectly  by  his  books  of  travel,  but  by  the 
general  enriching  of  life  and  thought 
which  such  journeys  and  such  close  obser 
vation  afford. 

In  the  summer  of  1873  he  went  to  Nova 
Scotia  with  his  friend  Mr.  Twichell,  mak 
ing    Baddeck    his    objective    point.     A 
pleasant  little  book,  which  he  calls  "Bad- 
deck  and  That  Sort  of  Thing:  Notes  of  a 
Sunny  Fortnight  in  the  Provinces,"  was 
the  result,  dedicated  to  his  fellow-traveller. 
Hartford  was  soon  regarded  as  a  half- 
[46] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

way  land  of  rest  between  New  York  and 
Boston.  It  began  to  be  a  habit  with  him 
to  spend  a  week  or  two  every  winter  in  or 
about  Boston.  An  earlier  acquaintance 
with  Ho  wells  was  now  ripening  into  the 
friendship  of  a  lifetime.  Howells  was 
then  living  in  Cambridge  and  editor  of 
the  Atlantic  Monthly.  Norton's  house, 
with  its  generous  hospitalities,  was  also 
open  to  him,  and  Longfellow  was  there 
with  his  kindly  welcome.  Warner  wrote 
to  Howells  in  March,  1873,  from  Hart 
ford:  "To  have  your  good  opinion  of 
'Back  Logs'  would  quite  content  me,  but 
to  have  it  expressed  so  exquisitely  nearly 
upsets  me.  Your  analysis  of  that  first 
sentence  is  so  much  better  Jthan  the  sen 
tence  itself  that  I  think  I  shall  ask  Mr. 
[47] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Osgood  to  substitute  it  in  the  next  edition. 
And  you  have  me  at  a  perpetual  disad 
vantage.  For  if  ever  I  try  to  express  my 
opinion  of  the  'Chance  Acquaintance'  at 
length,  I  should  quite  fail  I  am  sure.  We 
read  it  with  increasing  delight  in  your 
subtle  opening  of  the  characters  of  the 
two  lovers.  I  suppose  it  wouldn't  do  to 
tie  a  bunch  of  firecrackers  to  A.'s  coat-tail, 
would  it?  And  you  are  coming  pretty 
soon?  .  .  ." 

Returning  from  Boston  to  Hartford, 
the  following  week  would  often  find  him 
in  New  York,  where  the  Century,  the 
Authors',  and  the  Players'  clubs  threw 
their  doors  open  to  him,  as  the  Tavern 
Club  and  the  University  loved  to  do  in 
Boston. 

[48] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Again  he  writes  to  Howells  in  1874: 
"Failing  to  obtain  either  a  clerkship  or 
any  back  or  forward  pay  at  Washington, 
I  came  home  last  night.  Hartford  is  af 
ter  all  the  best  place  for  an  honest  man 
who  is  poor.  If  you  only  lived  here  I 
should  be  content  never  to  go  away  any 
more.  I  find  on  my  return  the  flavour  of 
your  visit  just  as  strong  as  it  was  when 
you  left.  Have  you  found  out  yet — I 
suppose  you  have — that  better  than  repu 
tation  in  Peoria  and  Hong  Kong  is  the 
attachment  of  one  sincere  person  who  is 
fond  of  you?" 

In  May  he  writes:  "My  dear  Mr.  How- 
ells  :  To-day  is  fit  to  make  a  body  cry ;  sky 
distant  and  deep  blue,  clouds  fleecy  and 
floating,  the  world  full  of  apple-blossoms. 
[49] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

On  such  a  day  you  said  you'd  come.  You 
admit  that  man  is  a  twofold  being.  It 
takes  two  of  him  to  make  one.  You 
promised  long  ago  to  visit  here.  You  ad 
mit  that.  How  did  you  keep  your  prom 
ise?  You  only  half  came.  Now  we  ex 
pect  the  whole  of  you.  We  are  compelled 
to  look  upon  you,  although  you  are  poet, 
essayist,  traveller,  and  critic,  as  only  a 
fraction,  without  Mrs.  Howells."  In  Au 
gust,  of  the  same  year,  he  continues:  "You 
dear  old  fellow,  and  you  are  not  so  very 
old  either  when  you  come  to  think  of  it, 
but  I  couldn't  be  fonder  of  you  if  you 
were  as  old  as  Catherine  Beecher."  Again 
he  says,  in  October:  "My  dear  friend, 
since  you  will  not  let  me  give  you  the  title 
of  'Mr.,'  which  Harvard  conferred  on 
[50] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

you,  the  time  has  come  to  say  good-bye, 
and  I  hate  to  say  it  and  am  not  jocular  a 
bit.  I  was  lonesome  a  good  while  after 
we  came  away  from  your  sincere  house 
hold.  It  almost  makes  me  cry  now  to 
see  Johnny  with  swollen  eyes  and  sup 
pressed  sobs  thrusting  his  hands  into  the 
basket  of  grapes,  and  casting  glances 
upon  the  wreck  on  the  table  to  see  if  there 
was  anything  else  that  could  better  stay 
his  grief.  Happy  boyhood  that  can  con 
quer  grief  by  filling  the  mouth.  You 
wouldn't  believe  what  a  great  place  you 
have  got  in  my  heart,  both  of  you  in  both 
our  hearts?  I  feel  so  much  richer  for  it. 
God  keep  us  all  safe  and  well,  and  give  us 
more  days  for  the  enjoyment  of  a  friend 
ship  which  I  believe  has  no  selfishness  in 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

The  last  letter  of  the  year  is  from 
Cairo  as  he  is  leaving  to  go  up  the  Nile,  a 
long,  full  letter,  such  as  a  skilled  writer 
can  write  and  a  friend  loves  to  receive.  I 
can  only  give  a  hint  of  it  here.  Every 
reader  of  Warner  should  know  his  "Win 
ter  on  the  Nile,"  and,  knowing  that,  the 
charming  description  in  this  letter  need 
not  be  reproduced.  He  says:  "I  only 
write  to  give  you  a  last  word  before  we 
start,  and  to  tell  you  how  much  you  both 
have  been  in  our  minds.  I  know  the  situ 
ation  would  take  hold  of  you  powerfully. 
We  have  wanted  you  ever  since  we  have 
been  in  Egypt.  .  .  .  For  myself  I  have 
no  human  feeling  when  I  am  cold,  and 
very  little  when  the  sky  is  cloudy.  As  yet 
I  have  written  nothing — save  a  letter  of 
[52] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
news  to  the  New  York  Times — barely  in 
my  diary.  I  have  had  no  leisure,  and,  be 
sides,  how  can  one  write  with  such  a  crowd 
of  new  things  before  the  eye  ?  .  .  .  Do 
you  know  what  a  dreary  thing  a  news 
paper  is,  and  what  relation  has  that  thing 
you  call  literature  to  this  vast  serenity  and 
on-going  of  the  ages  into  which  we  have 
fallen.  I  felt  ashamed  of  myself  when  I 
looked  at  the  sphinx,  and  that  great 
pyramid — is  it  not  more  important  to  find 
out  what  it  was  built  for  than  it  is  to  keep 
the  run  of  your  little  politics  and  our  small 
book-making?  What  a  tremendous  space 
we  Americans  fill  in  history !  And  we  are 
about  to  celebrate  our  centennial.  I  saw 
a  wooden  statue  of  fine  workmanship  in 
the  museum  here  that  is  probably  6,000 
[53] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
years  old.  Did  you  see  that  magnificent 
Doric  temple  at  Psestum  which  was  built 
before  the  she-wolf  suckled  Romulus? 
Just  over  yonder  is  old  Cairo,  built  not 
long  after  the  hegira  of  the  Prophet. 
There  is  a  portion  of  the  citadel  built  by 
Saladin.  All  about  and  under  Cairo  are 
the  mountainous  ruins  of  cities  and  civili 
sations.  And  will  you  still  publish  what 
you  are  pleased  to  call  the  Atlantic 
Monthly ?  Just  now  I  went  out  of  our 
front  door  to  look  at  the  stars  and  stepped 
upon  an  Arab.  Perhaps  it  was  only  a 
Nubian,  one  of  our  crew,  who  are  sleeping 
under  the  sky  on  our  lower  deck.  Well, 
God  bless  you  both.  I  wish  I  could  see 
you  just  for  half  an  hour." 

"My  Winter  on  the  Nile"  is  perhaps 
[54] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

the  acme  of  Warner's  achievements  in  his 
books  of  travel.  The  southern  sun,  the 
rest,  the  fresh  field  of  observation  seemed 
to  satisfy  his  physical  and  mental  life,  and 
we  can  almost  warm  ourselves  in  his  sun 
shine.  His  style  is  always  full  of  his  own 
charm  and  exactness.  His  intelligence, 
his  sympathy,  were  coming  into  fullest 
bloom.  He  speaks  of  a  family  of  culti 
vated  Germans  on  the  same  steamer  "who 
handle  the  English  language  as  delicately 
as  if  it  were  glass,  and  make  of  it  the  most 
naive  and  interesting  form  of  speech." 
At  Alexandria  he  says:  "In  one  moment 
the  Orient  flashes  upon  the  bewildered 
traveller;  and  though  he  may  travel  far 
and  see  strange  sights,  and  penetrate  the 
hollow  shell  of  Eastern  mystery,  he  will 
[55] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
never  see  again  at  once  such  a  complete 
contrast  to  all  his  previous  experience." 
The  motto  of  the  book  is  from  "Amrou, 
Conqueror  of  Egypt,  to  the  Khalif 
Omar,"  and  well  describes  what  Warner 
found  to  enjoy.  "O  Commander  of  the 
Faithful,  Egypt  is  a  compound  of  black 
earth  and  green  plants,  between  a  pulver 
ised  mountain  and  a  red  sand.  Along  the 
valley  descends  a  river,  on  which  the  bless 
ing  of  the  Most  High  reposes,  both  in  the 
evening  and  the  morning,  and  which  rises 
and  falls  with  the  revolutions  of  the  sun 
and  moon.  According  to  the  vicissitudes 
of  the  seasons,  the  face  of  the  country  is 
adorned  with  a  silver  wave,  a  verdant  em 
erald,  and  the  deep  yellow  of  a  golden 
harvest." 

[56] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Warner  says:  "When  we  are  yet 
twenty  miles  from  Cairo,  there  in  the 
southwest,  visible  for  a  moment  and  then 
hidden  by  the  trees,  ...  are  two  forms, 
the  sight  of  which  gives  us  a  thrill.  They 
stand  still  in  that  purple  distance  in  which 
we  have  seen  them  all  our  lives.  Beyond 
these  level  fields  and  these  trees  of  syca 
more  and  date-palm,  beyond  the  Nile,  on 
the  desert's  edge,  with  the  low  Libyan 
hills  falling  off  behind  them,  as  delicate 
in  form  and  colour  as  clouds,  as  enduring 
as  the  sky  they  pierce,  the  Pyramids  of 
Geezeh!  I  try  to  shake  off  the  impres 
sion  of  their  solemn  antiquity,  and  imag 
ine  how  they  would  strike  one  if  all 
their  mystery  were  removed.  But  that 
is  impossible.  The  imagination  always 
[57] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
prompts  the  eye.     And  yet  I  believe  that 
standing  where  they  do  stand  and  in  their 
atmosphere,  they  are  the  most  impressive 
of  human  structures." 

He  continues  later: — "The  pyramidal 
towers  of  the  great  temple  of  Medeenet 
Haboo  are  thought  to  be  the  remains 
of  the  palace  of  Rameses  III.  Here, 
indeed,  the  Egyptologists  point  out  his 
harem  and  the  private  apartments.  .  .  . 
It  is  from  such  sculptures  as  one  finds 
here  that  scholars  have  been  able  to  re 
habilitate  old  Egyptian  society,  and  tell 
us  not  only  what  the  Egyptians  did,  but 
what  they  were  thinking  about.  The 
scholar  to  whom  we  are  most  indebted  for 
the  reconstruction  of  the  ancient  life  of 
the  Egyptians,  Sir  Gardner  Wilkinson, 
[58] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

is  able,  not  only  to  describe  to  us  a  soiree, 
from  paintings  in  tombs  at  Thebes,  but  to 
tell  us  what  the  company  talked  about  and 
what  their  emotions  were.  .  .  .  This  is 
very  wonderful  art  and  proves  that  the 
Egyptians  excelled  all  who  came  after 
them  in  the  use  of  the  chisel  and  the 
brush." 

Through  all  the  wonder  and  enthusiasm 
inspired  by  monuments  of  the  past,  War 
ner  never  failed  to  see  the  present.  He 
exclaims,  seeing  the  miserable  inhabitants 
of  to-day:  "Not  more  palaces  and  sugar 
mills,  O  Khedive,  will  save  this  Egypt, 
but  some  plan  that  will  lift  these  women 
out  of  dirt  and  ignorance!" 

At  Dakkeh,  about  seventy  miles  from 
PhilaB,  he  speaks  of  Ergamenes,  an  Ethi- 
[59] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
opian  king,  who  is  said  to  have  begun  the 
handsome  temple  at  this  place,  and  also  to 
have  gained  a  reputation  by  a  change  in 
his  religion  as  it  was  practised  in  Meroe. 
"When  the  priests  thought  a  king  had 
reigned  long  enough,  it  was  their  custom 
to  send  him  notice  that  the  gods  had  or 
dered  him  to  die ;  and  the  king,  who  would 
rather  die  than  commit  an  impiety,  used 
to  die.  But  Ergamenes  tried  another 
method,  which  he  found  worked  just  as 
well ;  he  assembled  all  the  priests,  and  slew 
them — a  very  sensible  thing  on  his  part." 
"Nothing  in  Egypt,"  he  says,  "not  even 
the  temples  and  pyramids,  has  given  us 
such  an  idea  of  the  immense  labour  the 
Egyptians  expended  in  building  as  these 
vast  excavations  in  the  rock  at  Silsilis. 
[60] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
We  have  wondered  before  where  all  the 
stone  came  from  that  we  have  seen  piled 
up  in  buildings  and  heaped  in  miles  of 
ruins ;  we  wonder  now  what  use  could  have 
been  made  of  all  the  stone  quarried  from 
these  hills.  .  .  .  What  hells  these  quar 
ries  must  have  been,"  he  continued,  "for 
the  workmen,  exposed  to  the  blaze  of  a 
sun  intensified  by  the  glaring  reflection 
from  the  light-coloured  rock  and  stifled 
for  want  of  air.  They  have  left  the 
marks  of  their  unending  task  in  these  lit 
tle  chisellings  on  the  face  of  the  sand 
stone  walls.  .  .  .  These  quarries  are  as 
deserted  now  as  the  temples  that  were 
taken  from  them;  but  nowhere  else  in 
Egypt  was  I  more  impressed  with  the 
duration,  the  patience,  the  greatness  of 
[61] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

the  race  that  accomplished  such  prodigies 
of  labour." 

It  is  really  difficult  to  turn  away  from 
Warner's  book  on  Egypt.  His  chapter 
on  the  "Tombs  at  Thebes,"  in  spite  of  all 
the  learned  books  written  on  the  subject, 
is,  in  its  own  way,  unrivalled. 

After  the  tombs  of  the  kings,  he 
thought  little  remained  which  was  worth 
while  to  visit.  He  made  two  expeditions 
to  these  gigantic  mausoleums.  "It  is  not 
an  easy  trip,  for  they  are  situated  in  wild 
ravines  or  gorges  that  lie  beyond  the  west 
ern  mountains  which  circle  the  plains  and 
ruins  of  Thebes.  .  .  .  The  path  winds, 
but  it  is  steep;  the  sun  blazes  on  it;  every 
step  is  in  pulverised  limestone,  that  seems 
to  have  been  calcined  by  the  intense  heat, 
[62] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

and  rises  in  irritating  powder;  the  moun 
tain-side  is  white,  chalky,  glaring,  reflect 
ing  the  solar  rays  with  blinding  brilliancy, 
and  not  a  breath  of  air  comes  to  temper 
the  furnace  temperature.  .  .  .  When 
we  pass  out  of  the  glare  of  the  sun 
and  descend  the  incline  down  which  the 
mummy  went,  we  feel  as  if  we  had  begun 
his  awful  journey.  On  the  walls  are 
sculptured  the  ceremonies  and  liturgies  of 
the  dead,  the  grotesque  monsters  of  the 
under-world,  which  will  meet  him  and  as 
sail  him  on  his  pilgrimages,  the  deities, 
friendly  and  unfriendly,  the  tremendous 
scenes  of  cycles  of  transmigration.  „  .  . 
We  come  at  length,  whatever  other  won 
ders  or  beauties  may  detain  us,  to  the 
king,  the  royal  mummy.  .  .  .  Some- 
[63] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
where  in  this  vast  and  dark  mausoleum  the 
mummy  has  been  deposited;  he  has  with 
him  the  roll  of  the  Funeral  Ritual;  the 
sacred  scarabseus  is  on  his  breast;  in  one 
chamber  bread  and  wine  are  set  out;  his 
bearers  withdraw,  the  tomb  is  closed, 
sealed,  all  trace  of  its  entrance  effaced. 
The  mummy  begins  its  pilgrimage.  The 
Ritual  (Lenormant  epitome)  describes  all 
the  series  of  pilgrimages  of  the  soul  in  the 
lower-world;  ...  it  embodies  the  phi 
losophy  and  religion  of  Egypt;  the  basis 
of  it  is  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  that  is 
of  the  souls  of  the  justified,  but  a  clear 
notion  of  the  soul's  personality  apart  from 
the  body  it  does  not  give!  ...  In  this 
wonderful  book  the  deceased  is  allowed  to 
speak  of  his  own  morality,  and  among  the 
£64] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

wonderful  things  said  is  the  following: 
'/  have  given  food  to  the  hungry,  drink 
to  the  thirsty,  and  clothes  to  the  naked'  " 
June,  1875,  finds  him  writing  to  How- 
ells  from  Venice:  "We  are  here  at  last — 
the  East  kept  us  so  long.  ...  I  have 
given  half  a  year  to  the  dead  East  in  these 
days  of  centennials  and  thronging  ambi 
tions.  ...  I  am  writing  you  this  from 
the  top  story  (with  plants  in  the  balconies) 
of  what  is  probably  a  poor  palace,  on  the 
Grand  Canal,  second  door  below  palace 
Barboso,and  opposite  Salviati's  glass  shop. 
I  have  taken  this  admirable  little  perch  to 
write  in,  and  was  never  better  suited  in 
my  life,  only  I  do  wish  I  had  sat  up 
nights  and  written  up  Egypt  and  killed 
myself  in  so  doing  while  I  was  there.  It 
[65] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
is  so  hard  to  bring  back  the  colour  and 
bloom.    .    .    ." 

Again  in  August,  from  the  same  place, 
he  writes:  "A  photo  of  the  Casa  Falieri  I 
cannot  find  in  any  of  the  shops.  It  is 
very  stupid  of  the  photographers  not  to 
take  one  of  the  most  picturesque  houses  in 
Venice,  and  one  so  interesting  for  its  occu 
pants.  I  say  nothing  of  the  Falier.  I 
do  not  care  to  dig  up  the  dead — but  what 
a  world  this  is,  when  no  more  honour  is 
paid  to  the  man  who  has  done  more  to 
bring  Venice  into  good  repute  than  any 
man  in  the  last  hundred  years,  except  per 
haps  Ruskin.  .  .  .  Americans  are  al 
ways  floating  past  and  staring  about,  and 
probably  they  don't  know  that  in  this  very 
palace  the  only  true  history  of  Egypt  and 
[66] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

Rameses  II.  is  now  actually  building  it 
self  up  day  by  day.  Hang  it,  there  is  no 
chance  for  modest  merit.  By  the  way,  I 
want  to  tell  you  something.  I  fell  in  love 
with  you  over  again  the  other  day.  I 
chanced  upon  an  English  copy  of  the 
'Italian  Journeys'  and  re-read  it  with  in 
tense  enjoyment.  What  felicity,  what 
delicacy.  Your  handling  of  the  English 
language  charms  me  to  the  core,  and  you 
catch  characters  and  shades — nu-an-ces — 
of  it.  Why  do  I  break  out  upon  you  in 
this  bold  manner?  Well,  for  this,  you  are 
writing  another  story,  probably  it  is  all 
executed,  in  fact,  now.  Probably  it  is  to 
be  another  six-months'  child.  It  will  be 
as  good  as  the  other,  no  doubt,  and  that  is 
saying  everything.  But,  it  is  time  you 
[67] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
quit  paddling  along  shore,  and  strike  out 
into  the  open.  Ask  Mrs.  Howells  (with 
my  love)  if  it  is  not  so.  The  time  has 
come  for  you  to  make  an  opus — not  only  a 
study  on  a  large  canvas,  but  a  picture. 
Write  a  long  novel,  one  that  we  can  dive 
into  with  confidence,  and  not  feel  that  we 
are  to  strike  bottom  in  the  first  plunge. 
Permit  me  the  extent  of  the  figure — we 
want  to  swim  in  you,  not  merely  to  lave 
our  faces.  I  have  read  Mr.  James's 
'Roderick  Hudson'  up  to  September,  and 
I  give  in.  It  is  not  too  much  to  call  it 
great.  What  consummate  art  it  all  is,  no 
straining,  but  easily  the  bull's-eye  every 
time.  Another  noticeable  thing  is  that, 
while  it  is  calm  and  high  in  culture,  there 
is  none  of  the  sneer  in  it  or  any  cant  of 
[68] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

culture,  and  I  wonder  if  the  author  himself 
knows  that  his  characters  never  seem  to  be 
used  by  him  as  stalking-horses  to  vent  an 
opinion  which  the  author  does  not  quite 
care  to  father.  His  characters  always 
seem  to  speak  only  for  themselves.  I 
take  it  there  is  no  better  evidence  of  the 
author's  success  than  that." 

"In  the  Levant,"  which  appeared  the 
same  year,  is  a  book  for  travellers  to  read 
to-day.  Travellers,  like  biographers,  have 
not  been  famed  in  the  past  for  being 
truth-telling  folk,  but  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  if  no  earlier,  it 
was  discovered  that  nothing  is  so  witty 
and  attractive  as  a  bit  of  truth,  whether 
it  concerns  a  man's  temper  or  his  jour 
ney  to  the  Levant.  Warner  was  one  of 
[69] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

the  men  who  discovered  this.  His  ac 
count  of  Palestine  would  keep  many  a 
sentimentalist  by  his  own  fireside  if  he 
had  the  common  sense  to  read  "In  the 
Levant"  before  starting.  The  preface 
says:  "In  the  winter  and  spring  of  1875 
the  writer  made  the  tour  of  Egypt  and 
the  Levant.  .  .  .  The  notes  of  the  jour 
ney  were  taken  and  the  books  were  written 
before  there  were  any  signs  of  the  present 
Oriental  disturbances,  and  the  observa 
tions  made  are  therefore  uncoloured  by 
any  expectation  of  the  existing  state  of 
affairs.  Signs  enough  were  visible  of  a 
transition  period,  extraordinary  but  hope 
ful;  with  the  existence  of  poverty,  op 
pression,  superstition,  and  ignorance, 
were  mingling  Occidental  and  Christian 
[70] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
influences,  the  faint  beginnings  of  a  re 
vival  of  learning,  and  the  stronger  pulsa 
tions  of  awakening  commercial  and  indus 
trial  life.  The  best  hope  of  this  revival 
was  then,  as  it  is  now,  in  peace  and  not  in 
war."  Nearly  thirty  years  have  passed 
since  these  words  were  written,  and  the 
Turks,  with  the  forlorn  peoples  under 
their  flag,  are  still  unredeemed,  oppressive, 
unregenerate.  "Beyrout,"  Warner  says, 
"is  the  brightest  spot  in  Syria  or  Pales 
tine,  the  only  pleasant  city  that  we  saw, 
and  the  centre  of  a  moral  and  intellectual 
impulse  the  importance  of  which  we  can 
not  overestimate.  .  .  .  The  fitful  and 
unintelligent  Turkish  rule  cannot  stifle  its 
exuberant  prosperity;  but  above  all  the 
advantages  which  nature  has  given  it,  I 
[71] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
should  attribute  its  brightest  prospects  to 
the  influence  of  the  American  mission, 
and  to  the  establishment  of  Beyrout  Col 
lege.  .  .  .  The  transient  visitor  can  see 
something  of  this  in  the  dawning  of  a  bet 
ter  social  life,  in  the  beginning  of  an  im 
provement  in  the  condition  of  women,  in 
an  unmistakable  spirit  of  inquiry,  .  .  . 
and  this  new  leaven  is  not  confined  to  a 
sect,  nor  limited  to  a  race;  it  is  working, 
slowly  it  is  true,  in  the  whole  of  Syrian 
society.  .  .  .  Our  American  Consul 
was  not  in  good  repute  with  many  of  the 
foreign  residents.  .  .  .  The  dragomans 
of  the  Consulate,  who  act  as  interpreters 
and  are  executors  of  the  Consul's  author 
ity,  have  no  pay,  but  their  position  gives 
them  a  consideration  in  the  community. 

E?*] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

.  .  .  The  salary  of  the  American  Consul 
at  Beyrout  is  $2,000 — a  sum  in  this  expen 
sive  city  which  is  insufficient  to  support  a 
Consul  who  has  a  family  in  the  style  of  a 
respectable  citizen.  .  .  .  The  English 
name  is  almost  universally  respected  in 
the  East,  so  far  as  my  limited  experience 
goes,  in  the  character  of  its  consuls;  the 
same  cannot  be  said  of  the  American." 
This  experience  of  nearly  thirty  years  ago 
reads  as  if  it  were  yesterday.  It  is  to  be 
hoped  that  a  better  grade  of  men  now  go 
as  consuls  whose  pay  is  sufficient  for  the 
representative  of  the  United  States,  but 
that  a  brave  man,  Magelsson,  the  present 
consul  (1903),  was  supposed  only  yester 
day  to  be  murdered  because  of  his  coura 
geous  and  upright  behaviour,  shows  that 
[73] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

the  Turkish  Government  may  yet  need 
stronger  proof  that  civilised  nations  can 
no  longer  endure  such  faithlessness  and 
ignorance.  "We  were  not  sorry,"  adds 
Warner,  "to  leave  even  beautiful  Bey  rout, 
and  would  have  liked  to  see  the  last  of 
Turkish  rule  as  well." 

There  are  few  things  in  the  book  more 
characteristic  than  all  he  writes  of  Beth 
lehem.  Among  other  things  he  says: 
"Bethlehem  is  to  all  the  world  one  of  the 
sweetest  of  words.  A  tender  and  roman 
tic  interest  is  thrown  about  it  as  the  burial- 
place  of  Rachel,  as  the  scene  of  Ruth's 
primitive  story,  and  of  David's  boyhood 
and  kingly  consecration;  so  that  no  other 
place  in  Judea,  by  its  associations,  was  so 
fit  to  be  the  gate  through  which  the  Divine 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Child  should  come  into  the  world.  And 
the  traveller  to-day  can  visit  it  with  per 
haps  less  shock  to  his  feelings  of  rever 
ence,  certainly  with  a  purer  and  simpler 
enjoyment,  than  any  other  place  in  Holy 
Land.  .  .  .  There  was  one  chamber,  or 
rather  vault,  that  we  entered  with  genuine 
emotion.  This  was  the  cell  of  Jerome, 
hermit  and  scholar,  whose  writings  have 
given  him  the  title  of  Father  of  the 
Church.  .  .  .  There  is,  I  suppose,  no 
doubt  that  this  is  the  study  in  which  he 
composed  many  of  his  more  important 
treatises.  It  is  a  vaulted  chamber,  about 
twenty  feet  square  by  nine  feet  high. 
There  is  in  Venice  a  picture  of  the  study 
of  Jerome  by  Carpaccio,  which  represents 
a  delightful  apartment;  the  saint  is  seen 
[75] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
in  his  study  in  a  rich  neglige  robe;  at  the 
side  of  his  desk  are  musical  instruments, 
music  stands,  and  sheets  of  music,  as  if  he 
were  accustomed  to  give  soirees;  on  the 
chimney-piece  are  Greek  vases  and  other 
objects  of  virtu,  and  in  the  middle  of  the 
room  is  a  poodle-dog  of  the  most  worldly 
and  useless  of  the  canine  breed.  The 
artist  should  have  seen  the  real  study  of 
the  hermit — a  grim  unornamented  vault, 
in  which  he  passed  his  days  in  mortifica 
tions  of  the  body,  hearing  always  ringing 
in  his  ears,  in  his  disordered  mental  and 
physical  condition,  the  last  trump  of 
judgment." 

"In  the  Levant"  is  full  of  knowledge 
and  wit  and  wisdom.     It  would  be  diffi 
cult  to  find  a  truer  and  lovelier  picture  of 
[76] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

the  ^Egean  Sea  and  its  famous  islands; 
of  Ephesus  and  the  remains  of  the  later 
glories  of  the  Greeks.  Of  the  Athenians 
he  says:  "They  were  an  early  people;  they 
liked  the  dewy  freshness  of  the  morning; 
.  .  .  the  rising  sun  often  greeted  the 
orators  on  the  bema  and  an  audience  on 
the  terrace  below.  We  had  seen  the 
Acropolis  in  almost  every  aspect,  but  I 
thought  one  might  perhaps  catch  more  of 
its  ancient  spirit  at  sunrise  than  at  any 
other  hour.  .  .  .  The  Athenians  ought 
to  be  assembling  on"  the  Pnyx  to  hear 
Demosthenes.  .  .  .  One  would  like  to 
have  sat  upon  these  benches,  that  look  on 
the  sea,  and  listened  to  a  chorus  from  the 
Antigone  this  morning.  One  would  like 
to  have  witnessed  that  scene,  when  Aris- 
[77] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

tophanes  on  this  stage  mimicked  and 
ridiculed  Socrates,  and  the  philosopher, 
rising  from  his  undistinguished  seat  high 
up  'among  the  people,  replied."  War 
ner  concludes  with  these  words,  satisfac 
tory  to  all  true  travellers:  "For  myself, 
now  that  we  are  out  of  the  Orient  and 
away  from  all  its  squalor  and  cheap  mag 
nificence,  I  turn  again  to  it  with  a  longing 
which  I  cannot  explain ;  it  is  still  a  land  of 
the  imagination." 

The  Orient  will  be  older  and  newer,  a 
different  land,  in  %hort,  before  another 
book  of  travels  will  be  written  to  compare 
with  the  two-in-one  of  which  we  have 
spoken.  They  are  volumes  delightful  to 
those  who  stay  at  home,  enlightening  to 
those  who  wish  to  go  abroad,  arid  refresh- 
[78] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ing  to  all  who  have  suffered  the  weariness 
of  travel  and  have  not  seen  so  much  in  the 
same  places.  Warner's  taste  for  archse- 
ology,  which  thus  far  had  been  a  slumber 
ing  inner  consciousness,  rather  than  a  keen 
interest  developing  into  knowledge,  be 
gan  to  awaken  the  moment  he  knew  Pses- 
tum  on  his  way  to  Egypt.  With  his  pow 
ers  of  assimilation  and  love  of  study  in 
their  ripeness,  he  emerged  from  Egypt 
born  anew  into  one  department  of  human 
life  and  knowledge.  The  joy  and  excite 
ment  of  this  knowledge  never  grew  dim. 
It  was  not  like  him  to  insist  that  others 
should  of  necessity  feel  his  interest  in 
Egypt.  Therefore,  he  says  in  the  begin 
ning  of  his  journey  that  "there  is  no 
reason  why  any  one  indisposed  to  do  so 
[79] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

should  accompany  us,"  but  "we  are  off  to 
Pa2stum."  Even  then,  after  expressing 
something  of  the  charm'  of  the  spot  and 
saying  that  "in  all  Europe  there  are  no 
ruins  better  worthy  the  study  of  the  ad 
mirer  of  noble  architecture  than  these,"  he 
adds:  "The  Temple  of  Neptune  is  older 
than  the  Parthenon,  its  Doric  sister,  at 
Athens.  It  was  probably  built  before  the 
Persians  of  Xerxes  occupied  the  Acrop 
olis  and  saw  from  there  the  flight  of  their 
ruined  fleet  out  of  the  Strait  of  Salamis. 
It  was  built  when  the  Doric  had  attained 
the  acme  of  its  severe  majesty,  and  it  is  to 
day  almost  perfect  on  the  exterior.  .  .  . 
At  first  we  thought  the  temple  small,  and 
did  not  even  realise  its  two  hundred  feet  of 
length,  but  the  longer  we  looked  at  it  the 
[80] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

larger  it  grew  to  the  eye,  until  it  seemed 
to  expand  into  gigantic  size;  and  from 
whatever  point  it  was  viewed  its  harmoni 
ous  proportions  were  an  increasing  de 
light.  The  beauty  is  not  in  any  orna 
ment,  for  even  the  pediment  is  and  always 
was  vacant,  but  in  its  admirable  lines. 
The  two  other  temples  are  fine  specimens 
of  Greek  architecture,  also  Doric,  pure 
and  without  fault,  with  only  a  little  ten 
dency  to  depart  from  severe  simplicity  in 
the  curve  of  the  capitals,  and  yet  they  did 
not  interest  us.  They  are  of  a  period 
only  a  little  later  than  the  Temple  of  Nep 
tune,  and  that  model  was  before  their 
builders,  yet  they  missed  the  extraordi 
nary,  many  say  almost  spiritual,  beauty  of 
that  edifice.  We  sought  the  reason,  and 
[81] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

found  it  in  the  fact  that  there  are  abso 
lutely  no  straight  lines  in  the  Temple  of 
Neptune.  The  side  rows  of  columns 
curve  a  little  out;  the  end  rows  curve  a 
little  in;  at  the  ends  the  base  line  of  the 
columns  curves  a  trifle  from  the  sides  to 
the  centre,  and  the  line  of  the  architrave 
does  the  same.  ...  It  is  not  repeated 
in  the  other  temples,  the  builders  of  which 
do  not  seem  to  have  known  its  secret. 
Had  the  Greek  colony  lost  the  art  of  this 
perfect  harmony  in  the  little  time  that 
probably  intervened  between  the  erection 
of  these  edifices?  It  was  still  kept  at 
Athens,  as  the  Temple  of  Theseus  and  the 
Parthenon  testify." 

It   was   through   the   columns   of  this 
Temple  of  Neptune  at  Pgestum  that  War- 
[82] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ner  looked  toward  Egypt,  where  he  was 
to  see  "the  first  columns,  prototypes  of  the 
Doric  order,  chiselled  by  man."  Few 
travellers,  even  those  who  bear  the  learned 
title  of  archaeologists,  have  been  so  well 
fitted  by  nature  to  explore  the  unspeak 
able  wonders  of  the  Orient,  and  from  that 
day  in  Passtum  until  the  day  when  he  took 
his  last  view  of  the  ^Egean  Islands  his 
knowledge  and  fervour  grew  apace. 


[83] 


Ill 

July,  1876,  found  Mr.  Warner  again  in 
Hartford.  He  wrote  to  Mr.  Howells: 
"My  dear,  dear  friend:  I  have  come  into 
this  land  of  Family  and  Chance  Acquaint 
ances  and  find  it  hot  and  dirty,  and  in 
debt,  and  I  am  in  sympathy  with  it.  It  is 
only  when  I  think  of  you  and  the  dear 
friends  whose  presence  would  make  even 
the  peninsula  of  the  White  Sea  a  para 
dise  that  I  have  heart  and  resolve  to  do  as 
Cranmer  told  Ridley  to  do  under  similar 
circumstances,  play  the  man,  though  I  am 
burnt  to  a  crisp.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Warner  is 
sunning  herself  in  the  thought  that  she  is 
at  home.  That  woman  is  a  deep  and  de 
signing  patriot,  and  would  dwell  here  f  or- 
[84] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
ever,  if  her  plans  were  not  upset  by  her 
private  and  ill-concealed  affection  for  me. 
.  .  .  God  bless  you  for  your  generous 
notice  of  the  'Levant'  book.  It  quite  took 
my  breath  away,  and  I  am  not  sure  I 
should  have  survived,  if  it  were  not  that 
Mr.  Prime  and  General  McClellan  and 
others  of  that  sort  in  New  York  are  say 
ing,  publicly  and  privately,  that  it  is  the 
best  book  written  on  Egypt.  I  myself 
still  doubt,  however,  if  it  is  as  good  in  all 
respects  as  the  Pentateuch.  But  I  am 
sincerely  astonished  at  its  good  reception." 
Again  in  December  he  says:  "Just  now 
the  nearest  thing  is  old  Egypt — the 
Egypt  1,000  years  before  Abraham.  I 
am  trying  to  write  a  lecture  about  it  for 
the  institute  here.  A  weak  yielding  to  go 
[85] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

before  the  public  which  I  suspect  I  shall 
bitterly  repent.  But  just  now  I  am  tired, 
tired  of  writing,  of  books,  of  editorials,  of 
politics,  of  the  everlasting  squabble.  I 
wish  I  were  a  Returning  Board;  I  would 
elect  myself  to  go  on  a  mission  to  some 
misty  land  of  sun  and  fleas,  where  the 
wicked  and  the  weary  dwell  together  and 
don't  care.  I  am  again  deeply  in  your 
debt  for  another  exceedingly  friendly 
notice,  and  as  graceful  as  kind.  I  will 
not  thank  you  for  it,  but  it  gives  me  cour 
age  and  comfort.  Mr.  Ripley  conde 
scends  to  rather  sit  down  on  the  book  with 
his  broad  understanding  as  rather  a  liter 
ary  falling  off.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems 
to  me  rather  less  slovenly  than  some  of  my 
other  performances.  Mark  says  that  "to 
[86] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

give  a  humourous  book  to  Ripley  is  like 
sending  a  first-chop  paper  of  chewing  to 
bacco  to  a  young  ladies'  seminary  for  them 
to  review." 

With  all  the  literary  engagements  just 
referred  to  above,  he  naturally  found  it 
necessary  to  get  away  again  in  the  sum 
mer  of  1877.  The  season  was  spent  in 
the  Adirondacks,  and  another  book,  "In 
the  Wilderness,"  was  published  the  fol 
lowing  year  as  a  result.  It  contains  an 
amusing  story  of  a  man  unaccustomed  to 
rougher  wild  life  than  one  can  meet  black- 
berrying,  finding  himself  face  to  face  with 
a  bear  on  the  same  business.  It  con 
tains  also  a  description  of  the  flight  of  a 
doe  from  the  hunters,  which  is  one  of  the 
finest  appeals  of  that  nature  in  literature. 
[87] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
He  wrote  to  Howells  from  Hartford  in 
April,  1877:  "We  greatly  enjoyed  your 
first  of  April  letter,  but,  of  course,  we  do 
not  take  it  seriously.  We  are  not  to  be 
put  off  by  feigned  marriage  in  Quebec, 
nor  by  a  grand  burst  into  the  fashion  of 
Newport.  For  a  person  who  dislikes  so 
ciety,  the  Newport  cottage  is  just  the 
thing;  it  will  make  him  dislike  it  all  the 
more.  .  .  .  You  must  come  in  May. 
Ask  Mrs.  Howells  to  consider  how  few 
springs  there  are  in  this  little  life  of  ours, 
and  what  it  is  to  neglect  one  of  them.  Is 
there  any  good  in  life  except  we  snatch  the 
little  pleasures.  ...  I  have  just  read 
your  last  Venice.  When  that  story  is 
ended  you  are  going  to  stand  up  among 
the  masters,  so  keep  your  head  level." 
[88] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Again  in  October  he  says:  "We  shall  look 
for  you  on  the  25th,  next  Thursday. 
That  will  suit  us,  provided  the  weather  is 
propitious.  Let  us  hope  it  will  be.  The 
last  part  of  the  week  suits  me,  for  I  have 
a  partial  let-up  Saturday  and  Sunday. 
If  the  weather  is  good,  we  want  to  take 
you  to  the  Talcott  Mountain  Tower  and 
show  you  the  kingdom  of  the  earth  dyed 
red  and  yellow  and  brown,  and  to  South 
Manchester  to  show  you  the  ideal  factory 
village  of  the  world."  And  later  in  the 
month  he  wrote:  "What  a  charming  visit 
you  gave  us,  except  that  it  was  so  wretch 
edly  short.  It  seemed  heartless  for  us  to 
go  to  bed  while  you  two  were  driving  on 
through  the  sand  and  darkness  of  Massa 
chusetts — the  native  State  of  neither  of 
[89] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
you,  toward  a  midnight  horse-car  ter 
mination.  We  sat  up  till  one  o'clock, 
when  we  judged  you  were  safe  in  Boston, 
and  then  we  stopped  talking  about  you 
and  went  to  bed.  We  didn't  say  any 
thing  about  you,  however,  that  you  might 
not  have  heard,  if  not  with  profit,  cer 
tainly  with  pleasure.  We  dare  to  hope 
that  our  friendship  is  a  little  solidified  by 
this  visit  and  put  upon  the  unremote  fam 
ily  ground."  In  November  he  says:  "I 
feel  greatly  encouraged  by  your  opinion 
of  'My  Only  Boy.'  Isn't  he  a  little  like 
your  'John'?  I  hope  you  may  like  him 
all  through.  I  only  wish  you  were  multi 
plied  by  20,000.  But  I  fear  you  are  like 
Jean  Paul,  'The  Only  One.'  I  cannot 
hope  that  anyone  will  enter  into  the  spirit 
[90] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
of  the  'Boy'  as  you  did.  I  suspect  that 
you  saw  him  a  good  deal  through  the  form 
of  your  dear  'John,'  and  it  is  too  much  to 
expect  that  you  will  lend  'John'  to  all  the 
people  who  ought  to  read  and  buy  the 
book.  .  .  .  The  notice  is  thoroughly 
lovely  and  charming,  the  most  sympa 
thetic  in  the  world.  It  quite  takes  away 
my  power  to  give  you  ordinary  thanks.  I 
wish  the  book  were  half  as  good  as  the 
notice.  Why  could  you  have  the  heart  to 
carelessly  take  up  your  pen  in  that  way 
and  say,  'There,  my  boy,  that  was  the 
way  to  have  done  it.'  Well,  it  is  worth 
writing  a  book  to  get  one  of  your  notices, 
and  I  am  tempted  to  write  an  autobiog 
raphy  merely  to  extract  an  essay  from 
you.  If  you  were  only  my  enemy  now 
[91] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
and  had  written  that  notice,  how  I  should 
love  you.  .  .  .  We  had  a  very  good 
time  in  New  York  and  saw  a  great  many 
people,  who  saw  us.  ...  I  liked 
especially  Mr.  W.  W.  Story,  whom  I  saw 
at  the  Century,  and  also  at  a  breakfast  at 
Botta's,  where  Mr.  Bryant  and  Mr.  Rip- 
ley  and  a  dozen  or  two  swells  were  pres 
ent.  Whitelaw  Reid  was  also  there."  In 
1879,  writing  to  Howells  from  Hartford, 
he  surprises  us  by  saying  that  he  had  been 
writing  on  "The  People  for  Whom 
Shakespeare  Wrote."  The  book  was  not 
published  until  1897,  but  a  large  part  of 
it  was  written,  perhaps  one-half,  enough 
for  two  papers  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,, 
in  these  busy  days.  In  July,  1879,  he 
writes  to  Howells:  "You  see  I  am  junket- 
192] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ing  a  good  deal  though  I  contrive  to 
keep  up  my  editorial  by  writing  ahead 
and  behind.  .  .  .  Also  last  week  I 
went  to  the  centennial  of  the  town  of 
Cummington  (in  which  I  was  nearly 
born — as  Plainfield  was  set  off  from 
it  in  1785)  and  stayed  with  the  two 
lovely  Bryant  brothers,  who  had  come 
on  from  Princeton,  111.,  at  the  old  home 
stead."  .  .  . 

Warner's  most  absorbing  topic  just  at 
this  time  was  "The  Work  of  Washington 
Irving,"  and  an  essay  on  this  subject  is 
one  of  his  excellent  pieces  of  writing. 
He  also  wrote  the  biography  of  Irving, 
the  initial  volume  of  the  "American  Men 
of  Letters  Series,"  of  which  he  was  ed 
itor.  The  list  of  Lives  written  by  men  of 
[93] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
his  choice  is  an  excellent  one.  He  was  am 
bitious  to  do  the  work  well,  and  America 
has  to  thank  him  for  a  biography  of  Em 
erson  by  O.  W.  Holmes;  of  Poe  by  G. 
E.  Woodberry,  and  other  Lives  by  men 
of  talent  and  genius,  written  with  distin 
guished  ability. 

If  Warner  himself  had  done  nothing 
else,  the  "Life  of  Washington  Irving" 
would  have  made  his  literary  gift  evi 
dent,  and  what  was  of  still  larger 
value,  his  power  of  understanding  the 
character  of  Irving  and  differentiat 
ing  it  in  behalf  of  the  long  future. 
He  says:  "Washington  Irving's  writ 
ings  induce  to  reflection,  to  quiet  mus 
ing,  to  tenderness  for  traditions;  they 
amuse,  they  entertain,  they  call  a  check  to 
[94] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

the  feverishness  of  common  life;  but  they 
are  rarely  stimulative  or  suggestive.  .  .  . 
It  is  very  fortunate  that  a  writer  who  can 
reach  the  great  public  and  entertain  it  can 
also  elevate  and  refine  its  tastes,  set  before 
it  high  ideas,  instruct  it  agreeably,  and  all 
this  in  a  style  that  belongs  to  the  best 
literature.  .  .  .  The  service  that  he 
rendered  to  American  letters  no  critic  dis 
putes;  nor  is  there  any  question  of  our 
national  indebtedness  to  him  for  investing 
a  crude  and  new  land  with  the  enduring 
charms  of  romance  and  tradition.  In  this 
respect  our  obligation  to  him  is  that  of 
Scotland  to  Scott  and  Burns,  and  it  is  an 
obligation  due  only,  in  all  history,  to  here 
and  there  a  fortunate  creator  to  whose 
genius  opportunity  is  kind.  'The  Knick- 
[95] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
erbocker  Legend'  and  the  romance  witH 
which  Irving  has  invested  the  Hudson  are 
a  priceless  legacy,  and  this  would  remain 
an  imperishable  possession  in  popular  tra 
dition  if  the  literature  creating  it  were  de 
stroyed.  .  .  .  This  creation  is  sufficient 
to  secure  for  him  an  immortality,  a 
length  of  earthly  remembrance  that  all 
the  rest  of  his  writings  together  might  not 
give.  .  .  .  Irving  regarded  life  not 
from  the  philanthropic,  the  economic,  the 
political,  the  philosophic,  the  metaphysic, 
the  scientific,  or  the  theologic,  but  purely 
from  the  literary  point  of  view.  He 
belongs  to  that  small  class  of  which  John 
son  and  Goldsmith  are  perhaps  as  good 
types  as  any,  and  to  which  America 
has  added  very  few.  The  literary  point 
[96] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
of  view  is  taken  by  few  in  any  generation ; 
it  may  seem  to  the  world  of  very  little  con 
sequence  in  the  pressure  of  all  the  complex 
interests  of  life,  and  it  may  even  seem 
trivial  amid  the  tremendous  energies  ap 
plied  to  immediate  affairs;  but  it  is  the 
point  of  view  that  endures ;  if  its  creations 
do  not  mould  human  life,  like  the  Roman 
law,  they  remain  to  charm  and  civilise,  like 
the  poems  of  Horace.  You  must  not  ask 
more  of  them  than  that.  This  attitude 
toward  life  is  defensible  on  the  highest 
grounds.  ...  It  is  not  a  question 
whether  the  work  of  the  literary  man  is 
higher  than  that  of  the  reformer  or  the 
statesman;  it  is  a  distinct  work  and  is  jus 
tified  by  the  result,  even  when  the  work  is 
that  of  a  humourist  only.  We  recognise 
[97] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

this  in  the  case  of  the  poet.  Although 
Goethe  has  been  reproached  for  his  lack 
of  sympathy  with  the  liberalising  move 
ment  of  his  day  (as  if  his  novels  were 
quieting  influences),  it  is  felt  by  this  gen 
eration  that  the  author  of  'Faust'  needs 
no  apology  that  he  did  not  spend  his  en 
ergies  in  the  effervescing  politics  of  the 
German  states.  ...  I  cannot  bring 
myself  to  exclude  Irving's  moral  quality, 
from  a  literary  estimate.  There  is  some 
thing  that  made  Scott  and  Irving  person 
ally  loved  by  the  millions  of  their  readers, 
who  had  only  the  dimmest  ideas  of  their 
personality.  This  was  some  quality  per 
ceived  in  what  they  wrote.  Each  one  can 
define  it  for  himself;  there  it  is,  and  I  do 
not  see  why  it  is  not  as  integral  a  part  of 
[98] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

the  authors — an  element  in  the  estimate  of 
their  future  position — as  what  we  term 
their  intellect,  their  knowledge,  their  skill, 
or  their  art.  However  you  rate  it,  you 
cannot  account  for  Irving's  influence 
in  the  world  without  it.  In  his  ten 
der  tribute  to  Irving,  the  great-hearted 
Thackeray,  who  saw  as  closely  as  anybody 
the  place  of  mere  literary  art  in  the  sum 
total  of  life,  quoted  the  dying  words  of 
Scott  to  Lockhart,  'Be  a  good  man,  my 
dear.'  We  know  well  enough  that  the 
great  author  of  'The  Newcomes'  and  the 
great  author  of  'The  Heart  of  Mid 
lothian'  recognised  the  abiding  value  in 
literature  of  integrity,  sincerity,  purity, 
charity,  faith.  These  are  beneficences,  and 
Irving's  literature,  walk  around  it,  and 
[99] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

measure  it  by  whatever  critical  instru 
ments  you  will,  is  a  beneficent  literature. 

"The  author  loved  good  women  and  lit 
tle  children  and  a  pure  life;  he  had  faith 
in  his  fellow-man,  a  kindly  sympathy  with 
the  lowest,  without  any  subservience  to  the 
highest;  he  retained  a  belief  in  the  possi 
bility  of  chivalrous  actions,  and  did  not 
care  to  envelop  them  in  a  cynical  suspi 
cion;  he  was  an  author  still  capable  of  an 
enthusiasm.  His  books  are  wholesome, 
full  of  sweetness  and  charm,  of  humour 
without  any  sting,  amusement  without 
any  stain;  and  their  more  solid  qualities 
are  marred  by  neither  pedantry  nor  pre 
tension." 

Much  of  this  also  may  be  truthfully  said 
of  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  His  gifts 
[100] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
never  carried  him  so  far  as  to  rank  him 
among  these  writers  of  whom  he  was 
speaking  in  original  conception,  but  he 
never  wavered  in  his  idea  of  the  value 
of  the  literary  point  of  view  to  one  who 
was  eminently  possessed  of  the  writer's 
gift.  He  was  content  for  himself  in 
this  idea  of  achievement,  and  he  ad 
vanced  steadily  year  by  year. 

December,  1881,  he  wrote  Howells 
from  Munich:  "One  item  in  the  Ameri 
can  Register  to-day  has  given  us  great 
pain  and  anxiety,  it  is  to  the  effect  that 
you  are  very  ill  with  a  nervous  disease 
brought  on  by  overwork.  It  comes  to 
us  when  wre  are  in  a  little  trouble,  and 
has  not  made  our  day  any  brighter. 
My  second  thought,  after  sympathy  for 
[101] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
you  in  your  suffering,  was  that  the  novel 
which  was  to  be  done  by  January  1st  is 
not  yet  finished,  and  that  will  add  to 
your  worry  and  depression  of  spirits.  It 
seems  a  pity  now  that  you  did  not  quit 
work  last  summer  and  come  over  here 
to  finish  your  story.  I  wish  you  were  here 
now,  for  this  part  of  Europe  is  certainly 
good  for  nervous  complaints;  indeed  any 
part  of  Europe  is  more  soothing  than 
America,  and  I  hope  you  will  carry  out 
your  plan  of  coming  as  soon  as  possible. 
Perhaps  it  will  be  a  little  relief  to  you  to 
know  that  other  people  have  trials  also, 
and  that  little  in  this  world  goes  as 
smoothly  as  we  plan  it.  Else  I  should 
be  writing  you  now  from  sunny  Palermo, 
and  not  from  cloudy  Munich,  where  we 
[102] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
are  having  a  warmish,  rainy  December, 
and  no  snow  yet.  I  came  abroad  to  es 
cape  our  winter  and  find  some  sunny  re 
treat  where  Mrs.  Warner  and  I  could  take 
it  easy  and  perhaps  write  a  little.  The 
doctor  thought  Spain  would  not  suit  for 
the  winter,  so  I  planned  for  south  of 
France,  Italy,  and  Sicily.  We  went  to 
Avignon,  Nimes,  and  Montpellier.  We 
were  a  month  in  lovely  Provence  and 
Languedoc,  with  roses  galore;  the  climate 
not  too  warm,  and  suited  my  throat 
exactly.  We  have  here  the  best  music 
in  the  world,  very  good  friends,  and 
a  good  doctor.  We  have  got  a  place 
in  an  excellent  German  family.  I  was 
quite  in  the  spirit  of  writing  in  Mont 
pellier,  and  wrote  for  the  Council  and 
[103] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

Christian  Union — some  romantic  Proven 
cal  stuff.  I  want  to  do  some  work  this 
winter  if  I  can  find  a  genial  place,  but  I 
cannot  unless  my  anxiety  about  Mrs. 
Warner  is  removed.  She  sends  her  love 
to  you  both,  and  you  know  I  do.  .  .  . 
There  is  not  much  good  in  the  world  ex 
cept  friends." 

He  wrote  again  from  Sicily  in  April, 
1882:  "I  was  three  weeks  in  Capri,  some 
time  at  Amalfi,  and  now  over  a  month 
in  Sicily.  Heaven  is  pretty  near  the  hill 
of  Taormina,  with  great  Etna  dominat 
ing  the  scene.  You  never  saw  anything  so 
enchanting.  We  have  been  nearly  a  week 
at  this  old,  desolate,  interesting  Syra 
cuse.  This  morning  we  punted  up  the 
swift  Anapo,  and  pulled  up  the  papyrus, 
[104] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

on  which  the  Greeks  wrote  their  immortal 
remarks  about  goats  and  pretty  shep 
herdesses.  Theocritus  created  the  at 
mosphere  of  all  this  coast  for  me.  I 
sailed  to-day  on  the  pool  and  looked  thirty 
feet  into  its  clear  waters,  into  which 
Cyane  was  changed  when  she  opposed 
the  transfer  of  Proserpine  to  Hades  by 
Pluto — it  was  down  this  hole  that  he  went 
to  his  own  place  with  the  enchanting  girl. 
But  I  am  not  going  to  tell  you  about  the 
enchantments  of  Syracuse.  You  must 
come  here.  ...  I  just  have  the  very 
sad  news  of  dear  Longfellow's  death; 
since  I  saw  him  last  summer  I  have  felt 
that  it  might  occur  at  any  time,  but  the 
loss  of  a  man  so  noble  is  none  the  less 
great.  .  .  ." 

[105] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
The  Life  of  Washington  Irving  had 
been  followed  by  the  same  flow  of  literary 
work  as  usual,  but  the  trend  of  Warner's 
mind  was  becoming  more  and  more,  not 
social,  that  could  scarcely  be  possible,  but 
in  modern  phrase,  sociological.  For  a 
while  he  was  kept  in  the  same  traces  where 
work  multiplied  continually.  "The  Life 
of  Captain  John  Smith  sometime  Gov 
ernor  of  Virginia  and  Admiral  of  New 
England:  a  Study  of  his  life  and  writ 
ings,"  came  first.  The  chief  contribu 
tion  to  Warner's  biography  in  this  book 
is  to  be  gathered  from  the  preface,  where 
he  gives  some  idea  of  the  unexpected 
labour  necessary  to  accomplish  it.  "When 
I  consented,"  he  says,  "to  prepare  this 
volume  ...  I  did  not  anticipate  the 
[106] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
seriousness  of  the  task.  ...  If  the 
life  of  Smith  was  to  be  written,  an  effort 
should  be  made  to  state  the  truth  and  to 
disentangle  the  career  of  the  adventurer 
from  the  fables  and  misrepresentations 
that  have  clustered  about  it.  .  .  .  If 
he  was  always  and  uniformly  untrust 
worthy  it  would  be  less  perplexing  to  fol 
low  him,  but  his  liability  to  tell  the  truth 
when  vanity  or  prejudice  does  not  inter 
fere  is  annoying  to  the  careful  student." 
Another  book  of  European  travel, 
called  "A  Roundabout  Journey,"  was 
published  in  1883.  He  leaves  Paris  as 
we  all  like  to  do  when  we  must  leave  it 
at  all,  in  a  November  fog.  "At  night 
the  door  of  the  car  opened  at  Dijon.  The 
four  simple  words  then  spoken  by  the 
[107] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ticket-taker,  'Billets  s'il  vous  plait,'  so 
deluged  the  apartment  with  garlic  that 
we  had  to  open  all  the  windows.  If  he 
had  added  another  solid  word,  I  think  we 
should  have  been  compelled  to  jump  out 
of  the  car."  Mr.  Warner  found  Avignon 
as  ever  delightful.  "We  were  come,"  he 
says,  "to  a  land  where  statues  can  sit 
out  of  doors  with  comfort  in  winter." 
He  goes  to  the  extraordinary  old  city 
of  Aigues-Mortes  on  the  southern  coast 
and  on,  true  to  his  "Roundabout  Jour 
ney,"  through  Orvieto  and  other  old  Ital 
ian  cities  to  Sicily,  really  resting  in  ex 
quisite  Taormina  and  writing  of  it  as  no 
one  else  has  done  except  George  Wood- 
berry  in  his  unrivalled  monograph,  or 
possibly  some  of  the  great  French  au- 
[108] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
thors.  In  recommending  the  climate  of 
Syracuse  his  guide  referred  to  an  Amer 
ican  lady  who  recovered  her  health  there. 
"She  bought  a  cow,"  he  remarked,  "got 
well  in  a  few  weeks,  went  back  to 
America,  and  married  a  species  of  poet." 
Warner  thinks  that  "a  milk  diet  and 
union  with  a  species  of  poet  is  better  than 
being  converted  into  a  fountain." 

He  wrote  again  to  Mr.  Howells,  July, 
1883,  from  Hartford:  ".  .  .  The 
Tribune  represents  you  as  moving  about 
the  shady  sides  of  Boston  streets,  dodging 
the  sun  and  public  honour.  If  you  are 
where  the  Tribune  pretends  you  are,  do 
for  heaven's  sake  tell  me  how  you  are 
and  how  the  rest  of  the  family  thrive.  I 
would  welcome  you  back  with  all  my 
[109] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
heart  if  I  felt  sure  you  were  here.  For 
I  have  a  great  desire  to  see  you.  Just 
now  I  am  tied  here.  Hawley,  Clark,  and 
Hubbard  of  our  court  are  in  Europe. 
We  are  likely  to  be  kept  here  till  the  mid 
dle  of  September.  But  I  am  very  well, 
free  from  malaria,  and  hard  at  work. 
.  .  .  I  made  a  Virginian  trip  in  June." 
Again  in  December  he  writes:  "God  bless 
you  and  everybody  in  your  house  this 
Christmas  time.  ...  I  am  to  be  in 
New  York  for  two  or  three  weeks.  I've 
got  to  make  some  lectures  for  Princeton 
and  Cornell." 

Lectures  from  him  were  now  in  con 
stant   demand.     He   was   asked   to   take 
part  in  the  Social  Science  Congress,  at 
the  Ashfield  Dinner  and  other  annual  and 
[110] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
patriotic  meetings.  He  always  spoke  as  he 
wrote,  apparently  with  extraordinary  ease, 
until  others  were  led  to  forget  that  such 
expenditure  of  nervous  energy  cannot  be 
given  by  any  human  being  without  a 
corresponding  sense  of  loss.  He  found 
at  last  that  continued  speaking  increased 
a  delicacy  of  the  throat  which  gradually 
became  chronic,  and  he  was  thus  forced 
to  pass  a  part  of  every  winter  in  a  milder 
climate  than  that  of  New  England. 
The  meetings  of  the  Social  Science  Con 
gress  interested  him  deeply.  The  re 
ports  on  the  condition  of  prisons  and 
criminals  read  at  these  meetings  espe 
cially  arrested  his  attention.  His  mind 
and  heart  were  finally  given  to  the  sub 
ject  of  the  criminal  with  an  intensity 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
which  never  slackened.     For  fifteen  years 
until  his  death  he  lost  no  opportunity,  and 
sought   to   make   many   an   occasion,   to 
speak  and  write  upon  this  subject. 

"Will  you  come  and  lecture  for  us  this 
winter,"  said  a  friend  to  him  who  lived 
in  one  of  our  cultivated  and  intelligent 
New  England  cities.  "Yes,"  said  War 
ner,  "I  will  go  if  you  will  let  me  speak 
upon  prisons.  I  haven't  the  time  to  talk 
upon  any  other  subject."  His  audiences 
wished  to  hear  him  lecture  upon  litera 
ture;  they  wanted  his  wit  and  humour  to 
play  over  the  books  he  knew  so  well  and 
could  speak  of  with  an  instructed  mind; 
but  he  felt  himself  called  now  in  another 
direction.  He  visited  many  prisons  and 
passed  six  weeks  once  with  Mr.  Brock- 
[112] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
way  at  Elmira  Reformatory,  going  there 
for  unexpected  visits  and  consultations 
with  his  friend,  the  superintendent,  as  he 
found  the  time.  Nevertheless,  in  the 
summer  of  1885  he  visited  the  chief  water 
ing  places  of  America  and  wrote  a  de 
scription  of  them,  weaving  an  interest 
ing  story  called  "Their  Pilgrimage"  from 
his  experiences.  Beginning  early  in  the 
season  at  Fortress  Monroe,  the  autumn 
finds  him  at  the  White  Mountains  and 
Lenox.  He  makes  notes  at  Cape  May, 
Atlantic  City,  the  Catskills,  Newport, 
and  other  vacation  resorts.  It  is  a  charm 
ing  but  keen  report  by  a  trained  observer 
of  our  people  at  their  summer  amuse 
ments  and  dissipations.  "In  the  car  for 
Niagara,"  he  wrote,  "was  an  Englishman 
[113] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

of  the  receptive,  guileless,  thin  type,  in 
quisitive  and  overflowing  with  approval 
of  everything  American,  a  type  which  has 
now  become  one  of  the  common  features 
of  travel  in  this  country.  .  .  .  He 
was  accompanied  by  his  wife,  a  stout 
resolute  matron  in  heavy  boots,  a  sensible 
stuff  gown,  with  a  lot  of  cotton  lace 
fudged  about  her  neck,  and  a  broad- 
brimmed  hat  with  a  vegetable  garden  on 
top.  The  little  man  was  always  in  pur 
suit  of  information,  in  his  guide-book  or 
from  his  fellow-passengers,  and  whenever 
he  obtained  any  he  invariably  repeated  it 
to  his  wife,  who  said,  'Fancy!'  and  'Now 
really!'  in  a  rising  inflection  that  ex 
pressed  surprise  and  expectation.  The 
conceited  American,  who  commonly  draws 
[114] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
himself  into  a  shell  when  he  travels, 
and  affects  indifference,  seems  to  be  los 
ing  all  natural  curiosity,  receptivity,  and 
the  power  of  observation,  is  pretty  cer 
tain  to  undervalue  the  intelligence  of 
this  class  of  English  travellers,  and  get 
amusement  out  of  their  peculiarities  in 
stead  of  learning  from  them  how  to  make 
every  day  of  life  interesting.  Even 
King,  who,  besides  his  national  crust  of 
exclusiveness,  was  to-day  wrapped  in  the 
gloom  of  Irene's  letter,  was  gradually 
drawn  to  these  simple,  unpretending  peo 
ple.  He  took  for  granted  their  igno 
rance  of  America — ignorance  of  America 
being  one  of  the  branches  taught  in  the 
English  schools — and  he  soon  discovered 
that  they  were  citizens  of  the  world. 
[115] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
They  not  only  knew  the  Continent  very 
well,  but  they  had  spent  a  winter  in 
Egypt,  lived  a  year  in  India  and  seen 
something  of  China  and  much  of  Japan. 
Although  they  had  been  scarcely  a  fort 
night  in  the  United  States,  King  doubted 
if  there  were  ten  women  in  the  State  of 
New  York,  not  professional  teachers,  who 
knew  as  much  of  the  flora  of  the  country 
as  this  plain- featured,  rich-voiced  woman. 
They  called  King's  attention  to  a  great 
many  features  of  the  landscape  he  had 
never  noticed  before,  and  asked  him  a 
great  many  questions  about  farming, 
stock,  and  wages  that  he  could  not  answer. 
It  appeared  that  Mr.  Stanley  Stubbs, 
Stoke-Cruden — for  that  was  the  name 
and  address  of  the  present  discoverers  of 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

America — had  a  herd  of  short-horns,  and 
that  Mrs.  Stubbs  was  even  more  familiar 
with  the  herd-book  than  her  husband. 
But  before  the  fact  had  enabled  King  to 
settle  the  question  of  his  new  acquaint 
ance  satisfactorily  to  himself,  Mrs. 
Stubbs  upset  his  estimate  by  quoting 
Tennyson.  'Your  English  poet  is  very 
much  read  here,'  King  said,  by  way  of 
being  agreeable.  'So  we  have  heard,'  re 
plied  Mrs.  Stubbs.  'Mr.  Stubbs  reads 
Tennyson  beautifully.  He  has  thought 
of  giving  some  readings  while  we  are 
here.  We  have  been  told  that  the  Amer 
icans  are  very  fond  of  readings.' 

'Yes,'  said  King,  'they  are  devoted 
to  them,  especially  readings  by  English 
men  in  their  native  tongue.     There  is  a 
[117] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
great  rage  now  for  everything  English; 
at    Newport    hardly    anything    else    is 
spoken.' 

"Mrs.  Stubbs  looked  for  a  moment  as 
if  this  might  be  an  American  joke;  but 
there  was  no  smile  upon  King's  face,  and 
she  only  said:  'Fancy!  You  must  make 
a  note  of  Newport,  dear.  That  is  one 
of  the  places  we  must  see.  Of  course, 
Mr.  Stubbs  has  never  read  in  public,  you 
know.  But  I  suppose  that  would  make 
no  difference,  the  Americans  are  so  kind 
and  so  appreciative.' 

"  'Not  the  least  difference,'  replied 
King.  'They  are  used  to  it.' 

"  'It  is  a  wonderful  country,'  said  Mr. 
Stubbs." 

We    cannot    give    further    quotations 
[118] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

from  this  pretty  story.  This  bit  will  give 
an  idea  of  the  light  wit  and  keen  observa 
tion  with  which  it  is  filled,  making  it  a 
book  for  summer  reading  of  a  pattern 
seldom  indeed  to  be  found.  It  has  the 
writer's  charming  characteristics,  with 
passages  here  and  there  which  Thackeray 
and  again  Irving  would  not  be  sorry  to 
call  their  own. 

The  winter  of  1885,  in  spite  of  War 
ner's  various  literary  engagements,  found 
him  steadily  at  work  in  his  heart  upon 
the  prison  interests.  In  April  he  printed 
a  paper  called  "A  Study  of  Prison  Man 
agement,"  from  which,  being  lost 'to  sight 
at  present  in  the  pages  of  an  old  number 
of  The  North  American  Review,  we  must 
print  extracts  if  we  faithfully  represent 
[1191 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
the  occupations  of  Warner's  mind  and 
life: 

"Our  failure,"  he  says,  "in  the  handling 
of  criminals  with  reference  to  their  ref 
ormation,  and  the  proportionate  security 
of  society  and  decrease  of  taxation,  is 
due  largely  to  the  fact  that  we  have  con 
sidered  the  problem  as  physical,  and  not 
psychological.  The  effort  has  been  to 
improve  prisons  and  the  physical  condi 
tion  and  environment  of  prisoners.  This 
effort  has  been  directed  by  sentiment, 
rather  than  upon  principles  of  economy 
and  a  study  of  human  nature.  It  has 
been  assumed  that  if  convicts  were 
treated  with  more  kindness,  if  they  were 
lodged  in  prisons  well  warmed  and  well 
ventilated,  light  and  airy,  in  cells 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
roomy  and  comfortable;  if  they  had  bet 
ter  food  and  more  privileges  (graduated 
on  good  deportment),  they  would  be 
more  likely  to  reform  and  to  lead  honest 
lives  after  their  discharge. 

"This  movement  was  dictated  by  phil 
anthropic  motives,  and  I  am  far  from 
saying  that  it  is  all  wrong.  But  it  has 
not  produced  the  results  that  were  ex 
pected  ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  revolt 
in  the  public  mind  against  what  is  called 
the  'coddling'  system  is  justified  by  facts 
and  results.  The  modern  model  prison 
is  a  costly  and  architecturally  imposing 
structure;  it  is  safer  to  lodge  in  and 
freer  from  odours  than  most  hotels;  its 
cells  are  well  warmed,  lighted  with  gas, 
and  comfortable;  it  has  a  better  dietary 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
than  most  of  its  inmates  are  accustomed 
to;  it  has  bath-rooms,  a  library,  often 
large  and  well  selected;  an  admirably 
arranged  hospital;  a  cheerful  chapel, 
garnished  with  frescoes  and  improving 
texts;  there  are  Sunday  services  and  Sun 
day-schools;  there  is  a  chaplain  who  visits 
the  prisoners  to  distribute  books  and 
tracts,  and  converse  on  religious  topics; 
there  are  lectures  and  readings  and  occa 
sional  musical  concerts  by  the  best  tal 
ent;  sometimes  holidays  are  given;  there 
are  extra  dinners  on  Thanksgiving  day, 
Christmas  day,  and  the  Fourth  of  July, 
when  the  delicacies  of  the  season  stimu 
late  the  holiday  and  patriotic  sentiments; 
and  in  most  State  prisons  a  man  may 
earn  a  considerable  abatement  of  his  sen 
tence  by  good  behaviour.  .  .  . 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
"The  reform  in  prison  construction 
and  management  was  very  much  needed, 
and  I  am  not  anxious  now  to  express  an 
opinion  whether  or  not  it  has  gone  too 
far.  But  it  must  be  noted  that  along 
with  this  movement  has  grown  up  a  sickly 
sentimentality  about  criminals  which  has 
gone  altogether  too  far,  and  which,  un 
der  the  guise  of  'humanity'  and  philan 
thropy,  confounds  all  moral  distinctions. 
The  mawkish  sympathy  of  good  and 
soft-hearted  women  with  the  most  de 
graded  and  persistent  criminals  of  the 
male  sex  is  one  of  the  signs  of  an 
unhealthy  public  sentiment.  A  self- 
respecting  murderer  is  obliged  to  write 
upon  his  cards  'no  flowers.'  I  think  it 
will  not  be  denied  that  our  civilisation, 
which  has  considerably  raised  the  average 
[123] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
of  human  life,  tends  to  foster  and  in 
crease  the  number  of  weaklings,  incom 
petents,  and  criminally  inclined.  Un 
systematic  charity  increases  pauperism, 
and  unphilosophical  leniency  toward  the 
criminal  classes  increases  that  class. 

"It  seems  to  me  that  we  have  either 
gone  too  far,  or  we  have  not  gone  far 
enough.  If  our  treatment  of  the  incom 
petent  and  vicious  is  to  keep  pace  with 
our  general  civilisation,  we  must  resort 
to  more  radical  measures.  The  plan  of 
systematised  charity,  which  cultivates  in 
dependence  instead  of  dependence,  and 
the  increased  attention  given  to  the  very 
young  children  who  by  their  situation 
and  inheritance  are  criminally  inclined, 
are  steps  in  the  right  direction.  Proba- 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
bly  it  will  be  more  and  more  evident  that 
it  is  the  best  economy  for  the  State  to 
spend  money  liberally  on  those  who  are 
liable  to  become  dependents  and  crim 
inals.  If  the  State  were  to  show  as 
much  energy  in  this  direction  as  it  does 
in  police  supervision  and  the  capture  and 
conviction  of  criminals,  it  is  certain  that 
a  marked  improvement  would  be  felt  in 
society  within  a  generation.  .  .  . 

"My  proposition  is  that  there  is  very 
little  difference  between  our  worst  State 
prisons  and  our  best  in  the  effect  pro 
duced  upon  convicts  as  to  reformation  or 
a  reduction  of  the  criminal  class.  The 
State  prison  at  Wethersfield,  Conn.,  is 
one  of  the  old  type.  It  is  an  old  and 
ramshackle  establishment,  patched  up 
[125] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

from  time  to  time,  and  altogether  a 
gloomy  and  depressing  place.  It  is, 
however,  well  managed ;  it  is  made  to  pay 
about  its  running  expenses;  and  many  of 
the  modern  alleviations  of  prison  life  are 
applied  there — a  library,  occasional  en 
tertainments,  a  diminution  of  time  of  sen 
tence  for  good  conduct,  and  so  on,  what 
ever  such  a  place  is  capable  of  in  the  way 
of  comfort  consistent  with  the  system. 
But  the  inmates  are  the  most  discourag 
ing  feature  of  the  exhibition.  They  are 
in  appearance  depressed,  degraded,  down- 
looking,  physically  sluggish,  mentally 
and  morally  tending  to  more  and  more 
degradation.  There  is  no  hope  or  sug 
gestion  of  improvement  in  them.  The 
discipline  is  good,  and  the  men  earn  time 
[126] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
by  good  conduct,  but  there  are  no  evi 
dences  that  the  alleviations  (which  take 
from  the  former  terrors  of  prison  life) 
are  working  the  least  moral  change.  It 
is  a  most  depressing  and  dispiriting  sight. 
"Would  any  change  for  the  better  be 
wrought  if  the  environment  were  more 
cheerful?  The  State  prison  at  Cranston, 
R.  I.,  is  a  new,  handsome,  granite  build 
ing,  with  the  modern  improvements. 
Perfectly  lighted  and  ventilated,  with 
roomy  cells,  a  common  messroom,  an  ad 
mirable  hospital,  a  more  than  usually 
varied  dietary,  with  a  library,  and  all  the 
privileges  that  humanity  can  suggest  as 
consistent  with  discipline  and  security,  it 
is  as  little  gloomy  and  depressing  as  a 
State  prison  well  can  be.  Having  occa- 
[127] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
sion  recently  to  look  into  this  matter  offi 
cially,  I  confess  that  I  expected  to  find 
at  Cranston  a  very  different  state  of 
affairs  as  to  the  convicts  from  that  exist 
ing  at  Wethersfield.  The  improved 
physical  conditions  ought  to  show  some 
moral  and  physical  uplift  in  the  men.  I 
was  totally  disappointed.  Here  were 
the  same  hang-dog,  depressed,  hopeless, 
heavy  lot  of  convicts.  The  two  prisons 
might  change  inmates,  and  no  visitor 
would  know  the  difference.  You  might 
expect  just  as  little  reformation  in  one 
as  in  the  other.  We  are  not  considering 
now  any  question  of  sentiment  or  human 
ity;  and  the  conclusion  was  forced  upon 
me  that,  so  far  as  the  real  interests  of 
society  are  concerned,  nothing  is  gained 
[128] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

by  converting  prisons  into  comfortable 
hotels. 

"Since  we  have  abolished  punishments, 
and  are  not  ready  to  take  any  radical 
steps  for  reformation,  it  would  be  better 
to  make  prison  life  so  hard  that  detention 
would  be  a  punishment  in  itself.  The 
men  should  earn  their  living  at  hard 
labour,  and  be  made  to  feel  the  weight  of 
their  transgressions.  If  professional  and 
confirmed  criminals,  men  who  declare  by 
undergoing  second  conviction  for  a  fel 
ony  that  they  have  made  preying  upon 
society  their  business,  who  belong,  in 
short,  to  a  pretty  well-defined  criminal 
class,  cannot  be  removed  altogether  from 
troubling  this  world,  they  ought  to  be 
locked  up  permanently  and  made  to  earn 
[129] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
their  living.  They  are  of  no  sort  of  use 
in  the  world,  and  are  an  expense  and  a 
danger  to  society.  The  rosewater  treat 
ment  has  no  effect  on  this  class,  as  a 
rule.  Holidays,  occasional  fine  dinners, 
concerts,  lectures,  flowers — we  are  going 
ridiculously  far  in  this  direction,  unless 
we  add  a  radical  something  to  this  sort 
of  treatment  that  will  touch  the  life  of 
the  man,  and  tend  to  change  his  nature 
and  inclination.  .  .  . 

"Can  anything  better  be  done  with  men 
convicted  of  State-prison  offences?  It 
is  with  the  hope  of  throwing  some  light 
on  this  question  that  I  wish  to  give  a 
brief  and  informal  account  of  what  is  go 
ing  on  in  the  Reformatory  of  Elmira, 
N.  Y.,  under  the  superintendency  of  Mr. 
[130] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

Z.  R.  Brockway.  Here  is  an  experiment 
in  the  personal  treatment  of  convicts, 
unique,  so  far  as  I  know,  in  the  world; 
and  I  suppose  it  is  an  open  question 
whether  anybody  except  Mr.  Brockway 
could  carry  it  on.  It  is  well  to  say,  by 
way  of  preliminary,  that  the  theory  of 
indeterminate  sentences,  held  by  Mr. 
Brockway  and  other  prison  reformers, 
has  been  by  many  regarded  as  impracti 
cable  of  operation,  for  want  of  a  tribunal 
to  say  when  a  man  is  sufficiently  re 
formed  for  his  sentence  to  terminate. 
For  the  role  of  hypocrisy  is  one  of  the 
easiest  for  a  rogue  to  play. 

"The  Elmira  Reformatory,  which  cost 
more  than  it  should  (being  built  in  New 
York),  is  a  somewhat  pretentious  build- 
[131] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
ing,  situated  on  a  commanding  eminence. 
It  need  not  be  particularly  described,  fur 
ther  than  to  say  that  in  point  of  arrange 
ment,  light,  air,  roominess,  ventilation, 
etc.,  it  conforms  to  modern  notions.  .  .  . 
What  distinguishes  it,  however,  is  that 
it  is  provided  with  school-rooms  sufficient 
for  the  accommodation  of  all  its  inmates. 
And  it  is,  as  we  shall  see,  a  great  edu 
cational  establishment,  the  entrance  to 
which  is  through  the  door  of  crime.  The 
keynote  of  it  is  compulsory  education. 
The  qualifications  for  admission  to  it  are 
that  the  man  convicted  of  a  State-prison 
offence  shall  be  between  the  ages  of  six 
teen  and  thirty,  and  that  he  has  not  been 
in  State  prison  before.  In  his  discretion 
any  judge  in  the  State  may  send  a  con- 
[132] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

vict  of  this  description  to  Elmira.  He 
is  sentenced  to  the  Reformatory  subject 
to  the  rules  of  that  institution,  not  for  a 
definite  term;  but  he  cannot  be  detained 
there  longer  than  the  maximum  for  which 
he  might  have  been  sentenced  under  the 
law.  For  instance,  if  for  burglary  he 
might  have  been  sentenced  to  State  prison 
for  ten  years,  he  may  be  held  at  Elmira 
for  ten  years;  but  he  may,  in  the  discre 
tion  of  the  board  of  managers,  who  are 
appointed  by  the  Governor,  be  discharged 
in  one  year.  The  institution  is  practi 
cally  managed  by  the  superintendent. 
The  discharges  are  made  only  by  the 
board,  who  consider  the  man's  record  in 
the  prison,  and  the  probabilities,  from  all 
the  evidence  concerning  him,  that  he  will 
[133] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

behave  if  set  at  liberty.  He  must  have 
a  perfect  record  before  the  board  con 
sider  his  case;  and,  besides  this,  the  board 
must  have  confidence  in  his  will  and  abil 
ity  to  live  up  to  it. 

"The  process  of  his  release  is  this:  If 
he  is  reported  perfect  in  three  things- 
labour,  school,  and  conduct — for  each  of 
which  three  marks  are  required  each 
month,  making  nine  in  all,  for  six  months, 
he  is  advanced  to  the  first  grade.  If  he 
remains  perfect  in  the  first  grade  for  six 
months  more,  gaining  nine  good  marks 
each  month,  he  may  then,  at  the  discre 
tion  of  the  managers,  be  sent  out  on  his 
parole.  But  he  is  not  released  on  parole 
until  a  place  is  found  for  him  in  which 
[  134  ] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
he  can  get  employment  and  earn  his 
living.  If  his  friends  cannot  find  a  place 
for  him,  or  he  will  not  be  received  back  into 
his  former  employment,  if  he  had  any, 
the  institution  places  him  by  means  of 
correspondence.  On  parole  he  must  re 
port  his  conduct  and  condition  every 
month  to  the  superintendent,  and  this  re 
port  must  be  indorsed  by  some  one  of 
known  character.  If  the  paroled  contin 
ues  to  behave  himself  for  six  months,  he 
receives  his  final  discharge;  if  he  back 
slides,  he  is  rearrested,  brought  back,  and 
must  begin  over  again.  .  .  . 

"It  will  be  seen  from  this  slight  sketch 

that  it  is  not  an  easy  matter  to  get  out 

of  the  Elmira  Reformatory  before  the 

expiration    of    the    maximum    sentence. 

[135] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Three  things  are  required — perfect  con 
duct,  perfect  diligence,  and  willingness  in 
labour — with  as  good  progress  in  school 
as  the  capacity  of  the  man  admits.  .  .  . 
The  most  striking  thing  about  the  insti 
tution  is  the  cultivation  of  individual  re 
sponsibility;  a  man's  progress  depends 
upon  himself.  The  education  is  strictly 
compulsory.  Such  a  motive  was  never 
before  given  men  to  study,  for  release 
depends  upon  diligence  and  understand 
ing  of  the  matter  in  hand.  .  .  . 

"Never  was  compulsory  education  so 
completely  applied.  But  it  must  be  con 
fessed,  in  this  case,  that  the  class  had 
got  thoroughly  interested  in  the  subject. 
The  expression  of  their  faces  was  that 
of  aroused  intelligence.  Nothing  seemed 
[136] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

lost  on  the  majority  of  them;  the  finest 
points  made  by  Socrates,  his  searching 
moral  distinctions,  his  humour,  you  could 
see  were  taken  instantly,  by  the  expres 
sion  of  their  faces.  The  discussions  and 
the  essays  in  this  class  show  a  most  re 
markable  grasp,  subtlety,  penetration, 
and  power  of  drawing  fine  moral  dis 
tinctions;  and  the  vigour  and  fitness  of 
the  language  in  which  they  are  couched 
are  not  the  least  notable  part  of  the 
display.  The  previous  Sunday  there  had 
been  a  lively  discussion  of  the  question, 
'Is  Honesty  the  best  Policy?'  The  study 
of  the  morality  of  Socrates  led  the  class 
naturally,  and  by  their  request,  to  a  study 
of  the  morality  of  Jesus  and  the  New 
Testament,  though  not  at  all  as  a  re- 
[  137  ] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ligious  inquiry;  and  thus  a  result  was 
reached  in  moral  investigation  that  a 
clergyman,  beginning  at  the  other  end, 
probably  never  could  have  brought  this 
mixed  and  abnormal  class  to  attempt  will 
ingly.  For  these  men  are  not  only  crim 
inals,  warped  and  prejudiced  against  any 
religious  teaching,  but  they  are  of  all  sects 
by  inheritance,  perhaps  half  the  number 
Catholics,  and  fifty  of  them  Hebrews. 
Among  men  that  have  abandoned  all  prac 
tice  of  religion  it  would  be  perfectly  easy 
to  stir  up  a  bitter  theological  feeling. 
The  lecture  on  the  second  Sunday  I  was 
present  was  introductory  on  the  develop 
ment  of  religions,  preparatory  to  such  a 
study  of  the  New  Testament  morality 
as  had  been  given  to  that  of  Socrates. 
[138] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Before  I  quit  this  Sunday  audience,  I 
ought  to  say  that,  when  the  six  hun 
dred  are  assembled  it  is  one  of  the  most 
alert  and  quickly  responsive  I  have  ever 
seen.  .  .  ." 

Warner's  persuasion  that  reform  in 
methods  for  dealing  with  the  criminal 
cannot  long  be  delayed  saved  him  from 
restless  effort.  He  did  what  he  could. 
His  pen  was  heated  with  fresh  fire,  his 
heart  was  filled  with  new  longing.  He 
grasped  with  fervour  the  first  genuine 
fundamental  effort  the  world  has  seen 
in  the  right  direction; — that  made  on 
the  ground  of  indeterminate  sentence. 
Warner  learned  at  the  Social  Science 
Congress  that  Mr.  Brockway,  in  hope  of 
being  granted  indeterminate  sentence  for 
[139] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
Elmira,  was  beginning  experiments  there 
with  rather  more  men  than  he  believed 
well  for  the  experiments  but  with  a  prom 
ise,  understood,  of  limiting  the  number 
to  six  hundred.  This  promise  was  not 
kept,  nor  was  absolutely  indeterminate 
sentence  granted,  but  in  face  of  all  diffi 
culties  the  work  proceded  as  we  have  seen. 
He  saw  cabals  growing  against  the  re 
former;  he  watched  the  effect  of  general 
ignorance  played  upon  by  the  enemies  of 
reform,  and  he  lived  to  see  Mr.  Brockway 
overthrown  by  the  politicians  of  New 
York. 

Yet  who  shall  say  that  the  experiment 
has  failed?     In  the  perspective  afforded 
by  these  very  few  years  we  see  that  fail 
ure   is   impossible.     New   men,    younger 
[140] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
men,  will  offer  themselves,  and  women, 
too,   though   late,   will   begin   to   under 
stand  what  reform  means  in  behalf  of  the 
criminal. 

In  the  year  1886  Warner  renewed  his 
work  by  printing  two  popular  papers 
upon  the  subject  in  different  magazines. 
The  first  appeared  in  the  Arena  in  Janu 
ary.  This  paper  had  been  delivered  pre 
viously  as  an  address  before  the  Social 
Science  Congress  and  may  be  found  in 
their  archives.  The  second  appeared  in 
Harper's  Monthly  Magazine  in  Febru 
ary  of  that  year,  the  editor,  Mr.  Alden, 
having  always  shown  himself  sympathetic 
with  true  advance  in  humanitarian  direc 
tions.  Warner  wrote : 

"Is  there  any  way,  theoretically,  that 
[141] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
promises  to  change  the  confirmed  crim 
inal?  Is  there  any  evidence  that  this 
theoretical  way  will  work  practically? 
Yes.  I  firmly  believe  there  is  a  way,  and 
there  is  an  example.  That  remedy,  that 
way,  is  education,  but  education  under 
proper  conditions.  And  by  education  I 
do  not  mean  the  teaching  of  knowledges, 
the  imparting  of  information,  learning 
from  books  or  any  other  source.  I  mean 
education  in  the  original  signification  of 
the  word;  that  is,  discipline,  the  develop 
ment  of  unknown,  unused  powers,  the 
restoration  of  lost  powers — in  short,  a 
training  and  bringing  out  of  all  the 
powers  and  faculties  that  go  to  make 
up  a  man,  sound  in  mind,  in  morals,  in 
body. 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

"If  you  propose  to  reform  a  criminal, 
improved  physical  conditions  are  not 
enough.  For  such  a  man,  whose  moral 
nature  is  as  unstable  as  water,  no  tem 
porary  or  sentimental  religious  excite 
ment  will  avail  to  put  his  feet  on  a  rock 
where  he  can  stand  against  temptation.  A 
man  coarse  in  fibre,  weak  in  will,  an  easy 
prey  to  vice,  can  be  excited,  can  be  melted 
into  tears,  will  fall  into  a  mush  of  repent 
ance,  but  the  mood  will  probably  only  be 
a  passing  sentiment.  .  .  . 

"Let  us  see  how  discipline,  applied  to 
the  body,  to  the  mind,  and  to  the  moral 
sense  ought  to  work  upon  the  man — how, 
in  fact,  it  has  worked  in  one  institution 
with  which  we  are  familiar.  I  do  not 
refer  to  this  institution  for  the  sake  of 
[143] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
saying  anything  of  the  tact  and  skill  of 
its  manager,  but  to  call  your  attention  to 
the  philosophic  basis  upon  which  his  ef 
fort  rests.  For  it  is  very  important  that 
the  fact  should  be  recognised  that  a  prin 
ciple  is  involved  in  the  attempt  at  the 
Elmira  Reformatory  which  is  entirely  in 
dependent  of  the  adaptability  of  its  man 
ager  to  deal  with  men.  Of  course  much 
depends  upon  the  man  in  any  system 
or  institution.  In  teaching  deaf-mutes 
there  is  a  great  difference  in  the  power 
of  men  to  awaken  inert  faculties.  We 
may  have  a  good  system  of  municipal 
government  the  working  of  which  may 
be  defeated  by  a  bad  or  incompetent 
mayor,  or  we  may  have  a  defective  sys 
tem  which  may  yield  fair  results  with  a 
[144] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
competent,  honest   executive;   but  it  re 
mains  true  that  a  good  system  will  eventu 
ally  give  the  best  results.     .     .     . 

"In  order  to  reform  any  person  ad 
dicted  to  evil  living,  an  adequate  motive 
must  be  offered.  Under  the  method  de 
scribed  the  powerful  motive  is  the  desire 
of  regaining  liberty.  This  would  seem 
enough,  but  it  is  not  always  sufficient  to 
arouse  ambition  in  a  sluggish  nature, 
especially  when  the  period  of  incarcera 
tion  is  fixed  and  is  short.  This  motive, 
then,  has  to  be  supplemented  by  others. 
A  way  must  be  found  to  arouse  the  slug 
gish  body,  and  interest  the  dormant  mind. 
It  is  sometimes  long  before  this  way  can 
be  discovered.  These  ruined  natures 
have  often  very  little  that  can  be  ap- 
[145] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

pealed  to  successfully.  But  I  believe 
there  is  in  most  men  and  women,  however 
degraded,  the  seed  of  a  better  life.  The 
first  step  will  probably  be  the  awakening 
of  an  interest  in  something  outside  them 
selves;  not  a  purpose  of  change,  but  sim 
ply  an  interest.  It  may  be  a  desire  to 
learn  the  alphabet,  or  an  awakened  taste 
for  reading,  or  a  little  inclination  to  know 
something.  It  may  be  a  pride  in  per 
sonal  appearance,  or  a  wish  to  get  com 
mendation  for  good  behaviour,  or  a 
dawning  sense  of  the  agreeableness  of 
order,  neatness,  cleanliness.  Or  it  may 
be  some  pleasure  in  a  discovered  power 
to  do  well  a  piece  of  work.  This  inter 
est,  once  aroused,  can  be  stimulated  by 
various  incitements,  slight  rewards  of 
[146] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
promotion,  the  fear  of  social  degrada 
tion;  and  this  path  of  doing  well  will  be 
come  powerfully  attractive  when  it  is  seen 
to  be  the  path,  and  the  only  one,  to  lib 
erty.  But  this  interest  in  any  form,  with 
even  the  prize  of  liberation,  cannot  be 
depended  on  to  last.  The  will  of  the 
criminal  is  weak  and  vacillating.  He  can 
not  be  depended  on,  he  cannot  depend 
upon  himself,  for  continuance.  He  may 
fail  and  fall  again  and  again.  The  only 
remedy  in  his  case — and  it  is  the  common 
case — is  to  keep  him  at  it,  keep  him  try 
ing,  until  a  habit  is  formed,  until  his  will 
is  strengthened,  until,  in  fact,  it  is  men 
tally  and  physically  just  as  easy  for  him 
to  live  a  normal,  healthful  life  as  it  was 
to  live  a  disorderly  life.  .  .  . 
[147] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
"The  important  thing,  as  necessary  in 
this  system  to  getting  out  of  confinement 
as  to  becoming  a  man,  is  the  formation 
of  habit.  And  here  is  where  the  notion 
of  an  indeterminate  sentence  comes  in  as 
the  only  condition  of  forming  a  fixed 
habit. 

"An  indeterminate  sentence  is  the  sen 
tence  of  a  convict  to  confinement  until  in 
the  judgment  of  some  tribunal  he  is  fit  to 
go  out  into  society  again,  until  it  is  evi 
dent  that  he  is  likely  to  be  law-abiding. 
If  a  person  is  determined  upon  a  crim 
inal  life,  the  best  thing  that  can  be  done 
for  him  and  for  society  is  to  confine  him 
where  he  can  do  no  mischief,  and  where 
his  labour  will  pay  for  his  keeping,  so  that 
he  may  not  be  an  expense  to  society  nor 
[148] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

a  terror  to  it.  And,  logically,  he  should 
be  confined  until  there  is  good  reason  to 
believe  that  he  will  be  a  self-supporting, 
law-abiding  member  of  the  community. 
Now  the  difficulty  heretofore  has  been  to 
determine  when  a  person  might  safely  be 
released  on  an  indeterminate  sentence. 
Under  the  present  prison  system,  if  re 
lease  depended  simply  on  good  behaviour, 
on  external  observance  of  rules,  most 
criminals  are  shrewd  enough  to  behave 
admirably,  and  to  even  offer  evidence  of 
Christian  conversion,  in  order  to  get  re 
lease.  Where  is  there  a  tribunal  that 
could  pass  upon  his  character?  The  El- 
mira  system  compels  a  person  literally  to 
work  out  his  own  salvation.  It  will 
take  some  men  a  longer  and  some  men  a 
[149] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
shorter  time  to  do  it,  that  is,  to  acquire 
such  a  habit  that  for  a  given  period  they 
can  stand  perfect  in  study,  in  work,  in 
conduct.  Under  our  present  rule  of  de 
terminate  sentences  there  are  many  incor 
rigible  cases.  Probably  there  are  some 
natures  incapable  of  being  changed  to 
anything  better.  Let  such  stay  where 
they  can  pay  for  their  living  and  not 
injure  society.  But  it  is  difficult  to  say 
of  any  man  that  he  cannot  be  reached 
and  touched  by  discipline,  physical,  men 
tal,  and  moral,  for  a  long  time  and  con 
tinuous;  that  it  is  impossible  to  drill  him, 
in  years  of  effort,  into  a  habit  of  decent 
living  and  a  liking  for  an  orderly  life. 
It  is  impossible,  psychologically  and 
physiologically,  for  a  person  to  obey  rigid 
[150] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
rules  of  order  and  decency,  to  be  drilled 
in  mental  exercises,  to  be  subject  to  super 
vision  for  intelligent  and  attentive  labour, 
for  a  considerable  length  of  time,  and  not 
form  new  habits,  not  be  changed  sensibly 
and  probably  radically.  It  may  be  in 
one  year,  it  may  be  in  ten  years,  but  ulti 
mately  habits  will  be  formed,  and  the  man 
cannot,  without  a  greater  or  less  effort, 
be  what  he  was  before  he  was  subjected 
to  this  process.  .  .  ." 

Warner  had  an  excellent  example  in 
Dickens  to  encourage  him  to  believe  that 
the  pen  has  power  even  in  these  unwonted 
paths.  Dickens's  work  for  Newgate 
prison  has  never  been  questioned,  and  at 
that  time  "interest  was  shown  in  the  pris 
oner,"  Dickens  says,  "but  no  sympathy." 
[151] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
The  world  has  progressed;  yet,  consider 
ing  the  need,  it  moves  slowly.  May  it 
not  be  hoped  that  all  who  loved  Charles 
Dudley  Warner  and  who  cared  for  his 
life  and  work  in  any  degree  will  be  quick 
ened  to  forward  this  interest  of  his— 
that  it  may  become  theirs,  since  it  is  for 
humanity  as  well  as  for  his  memory.  We 
are  reminded  in  this  of  the  unforgetable 
words  of  Fenelon  where  he  speaks  of  per 
sonal  grief  and  says:  "II  faut  passer  a 
1'humanite  cet  attendrissement  sur  soi." 


[152] 


IV 

During  the  winter  of  1877  Warner  had 
taken  his  first  brief  glimpse  of  Mexico, 
but  it  was  not  until  after  later  visits  in 
1888  that  he  published  a  book  containing 
much  that  was  new  upon  a  country  which 
possessed  great  fascination  for  him.  He 
began  also  to  make  notes  on  California,  al 
though  his  book  "Our  Italy"  was  not  fully 
written  until  later.  Of  Mexico  he  was 
never  tired  and  was  always  ready  after 
this  first  glimpse  to  start  off  again  when 
he  could  find  an  agreeable  companion,  if 
only  for  a  month  or  two.  The  colour,  the 
climate,  the  people,  all  delighted  him,  and 
the  constant  surprises.  Writing  there 
from  a  remote  Indian  village,  Zinzunzan, 
[153] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
he  says:  "To  these  poor  savages,  Philip 
II.  made  a  gift  that  any  monarch  or  any 
city  might  envy."  Here  in  a  decaying 
church  of  ancient  splendour  is  to  be  found 
The  Entombment,  by  Titian.  "It  seems 
incredible,"  he  continues,  "that  a  work  of 
this  value  should  be  comparatively  un 
known,  and  that  it  should  be  found  in  a 
remote  Indian  village  in  Mexico.  But 
the  evidence  that  it  is  by  Titian  is  strong. 
.  .  .  We  could  not  but  be  profoundly 
impressed." 

In  1888  Warner  seems  to  have  pub 
lished  the  results  of  several  brief  jour 
neys  in  foregoing  years  in  a  book  called 
"On  Horseback."  Virginia,  North  Caro 
lina,  and  Tennessee  were  all  delightfully 
reviewed.  "If  the  travellers  had  known," 
[154] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

he  says,  "the  capacities  and  resources  of 
the  country  they  would  not  have  started 
without  a  supply  train,  or  the  establish 
ment  of  bases  of  provisions  in  advance." 
They  did  not  have  a  very  easy  time,  these 
travellers  on  a  horseback  tour,  but  ease 
was  not  what  they  started  for,  so  they 
kept  on.  Speaking  of  one  town  where 
the  jail  was  shut  up,  Warner  says:  "It 
is  not  much  use  to  try  to  run  a  jail  with 
out  liquor." 

Mr.  Alden,  of  Harper's  Magazine,  pro 
posed  to  Mr.  Warner  in  1885  that  he 
should  make  an  extended  journey  South 
and  West  and  report  upon  the  condition 
of  the  States  which  were  less  generally 
known  and  less  closely  affiliated  than  was 
desirable  with  the  North  and  East.  The 
[155] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
book  which  was  the  result  of  observations 
made  upon  this  tour  contains  a  prefatory 
note  to  his  friend  the  editor,  in  which  he 
says:  "The  object  was  not  to  present  a 
comprehensive  account  of  the  country 
south  and  west,  but  to  note  certain  rep 
resentative  developments,  tendencies,  and 
dispositions,  the  communication  of  which 
would  lead  to  a  better  understanding  be 
tween  different  sections.  The  strongest 
impression  produced  upon  the  writer  in 
making  these  studies  was  that  the  pros 
perous  life  of  the  Union  depends  upon 
the  life  and  dignity  of  the  individual 
States." 

Warner  fell  in  love  with  New  Orleans 
at  first  sight.     Among  his  friends  there 
he  met  a  lady  who  said  (only  what  sev- 
[156] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
eral  others  said  in  substance),  "We  are 
going  to  get  more  out  of  this  war  than 
you  at  the  North,  because  we  suffered 
more."  "South  and  West"  is  a  book  of 
permanent  value  to  patriotic  Americans, 
and  although  changes  have  gone  forward 
steadily  since  the  day  it  was  written  its 
value  and  interest  have  scarcely  lessened. 
It  is  a  great  temptation  to  quote  from 
it;  indeed  it  seems  unfair  not  to  repre 
sent  the  many  months  of  Warner's  life 
which  were  absorbed  in  the  labour  of  ob 
serving  and  travelling  and  recording,  in 
order  to  make  this  book,  but  space  is  lack 
ing.  Bound  in  the  same  volume  is  a 
valuable  study  of  Canada.  The  writer 
heard  him  say  some  years  after  this  book 
("South  and  West")  was  published  that 
[157] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
he  always  felt  sorry  that  he  had  included 
Canada.  That  was  a  study  by  itself  and 
overweighted  the  book,  at  the  same  time 
being  lost  there.  It  stands,  wherever  it 
is  found,  as  a  valuable  piece  of  work,  and 
if  Warner  had  lived  would  have  shown 
him  possessed  of  knowledge  such  as  a 
real  statesman  should  possess,  knowledge 
which  showed  him  ready  for  any  public 
position. 

We  find  a  letter  to  his  old  friend  Wirt 
Dexter,  written  from  New  York,  March, 
1889,  saying:  "I  am  delighted  that  you 
are  able  to  sit  up  and  take  a  little  gruel, 
and  be  healthfully  indignant  over  the  low 
plane  on  which  Harrison  has  started. 
His  idea  seems  to  be  to  reward  all  the 
[158] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
newspapers  and  army  boys  who  helped 
nominate  and  elect  him.  I  wonder  if 
there  are  no  gentlemen  in  this  country 
who  could  represent  us  abroad,  or  whether 
a  gentleman  could  not  represent  us. 

"I  have  been  scratching  away  on  my 
serial,  which  they  are  now  calling  a  novel, 
and  have  got  to  a  burning  point  where  I 
want  to  look  about  a  little.  So  I  am  go 
ing  down  to  Washington  to-morrow  for 
a  couple  of  weeks.  I  go  for  some  local 
colour,  but  I  shall  steer  clear  of  the  per 
sons  in  office  and  those  who  want  to  be 
in.  I  cannot  understand  the  policy  of 
the  Republican  party.  If  it  really  wants 
a  united  Union,  why  don't  it  act  as  if  the 
South  were  in  the  Union.  Not  a  South 
ern  man  yet  appointed  anywhere.  And 
[159] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
what    a    good    Attorney- General    John 
Mason  Brown  would  have  made.     You 
haven't  got  another  Fuller,  have  you,  to 
go  in  Justice  -      -'s  place?" 

The  renewal  of  his  early  friendship 
with  Wirt  Dexter  happened  on  his  first 
visit  to  Chicago  after  an  interval  of 
twenty  years  or  more.  Each  of  them 
had  been  absorbed  in  their  successful  work 
and  they  had  never  met;  and  Warner 
seized  his  earliest  opportunity  to  go  to 
Mr.  Dexter's  house.  The  great  lawyer 
was  sitting  on  his  piazza  when  Warner 
came  up  the  steps  and  rang  the  bell;  but 
both  had  changed  and  they  did  not  recog 
nise  each  other.  Mrs.  Dexter  received 
her  guest  w^armly  and  sent  for  her  hus 
band.  When  he  entered  the  room  War- 
[160] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
ner  had  the  advantage,  and  going  quietly 
up  and  taking  him  by  the  hand  said  (re 
membering  their  old  transaction  in  house 
hold  goods)  :  "Wirt,  did  you  ever  pay  me 
for  that  furniture?"  A  fine  burst  of 
laughter  followed  this  unexpected  sally, 
and  the  ttto  friends  rejoiced  to  find  each 
other  really  unchanged. 

Later  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Dexter  from 
Munich,  September,  1891: 

"My  dear,  dear  friend:  I  received  your 
note  when  I  was  in  Marienbad,  and  should 
at  once  have  replied,  but  I  got  there  with 
an  attack  of  rheumatism  in  my  right  arm, 
which  has  incapacitated  me  from  writing. 
I  am  now,  after  five  weeks,  much  better 
and  speedily  on  the  way  to  be  all  right, 
[161] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
but  my  head  is  still  too  uncertain  for  any 
thing  but  a  short  note.  We  have  just 
been  two  weeks  in  Meran,  in  Tyrol,  about 
the  loveliest  place  the  Lord  ever  made, 
and  full  of  grapes  and  figs.  .  .  .  We 
expect  to  be  at  home  before  December  1. 
I  am  not  sorry  to  go,  though  I  know  I 
shall  want  at  once  to  flee  from  the  win 
ter  of  New  England.  .  .  .  The  sad 
dest  thing  of  all  the  things  is  Lowell's 
death.  Boston  is  fast  ceasing  to  be  Bos 
ton. 

"Ever  affectionately  yours." 

It  was  close  upon  the  beginning  of  the 

last  decade  of  Warner's  life,  1890,  that 

he  conceived  the  idea  of  writing  a  novel, 

the  first  hint  of  which  we  find  in  his  let- 

[162] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
ter  to  Wirt  Dexter.  He  was  then  sixty 
years  old  and  had  occupied  himself  in  a 
different  field  of  letters  up  to  that  time; 
nevertheless  he  undertook,  with  a  boyish 
sense  of  excitement  for  a  "new  thing,"  a 
trilogy  of  novels  called,  respectively,  "A 
Little  Journey  in  the  World,"  "The 
Golden  House,"  and  "That  Fortune." 
They  are  all  good  and  interesting  stories; 
"first-rate  reading";  though  the  first  is 
by  an  essayist  who  has  fallen  in  love  with 
a  few  characters  and  makes  them  talk  out 
subjects  because  the  subjects  interest  him. 
"The  Golden  House"  is,  however,  a  de 
lightful  story  without  let  or  hindrance. 
Any  one  seeking  for  an  interesting  novel 
may  well  read  that  and  its  sequel,  "That 
Fortune."  We  need  not  say  that  these 
[163] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
three  novels  absorbed  the  larger  part  of 
his  interest  and  attention  during  the  years 
he  held  them  in  hand.  It  was  1899  be 
fore  the  last,  "That  Fortune,"  was  pub 
lished. 

Among  the  few  letters  we  find  of  this 
period  is  one  written  to  Manchester-by- 
Sea,  September,  1893,  from  Hartford. 
.  .  .  "On  my  way  down  I  read  Miss 
Jewett's  last  story  in  the  Century.  When 
I  came  home  I  read  it  aloud  amid  laugh 
ter  and  tears  and  with  a  choking  voice 
now  and  then.  How  pathetic  is  happi 
ness!  This  is  a  true  New  England  pic 
ture.  .  .  .  This  is  a  higher  truth  about 
it.  'The  dear  sweet  thing!'  they  said,  as 
I  read  on,  and  found  those  swift  sure 
touches  of  nature ;  meaning  the  dear  sweet 
[164] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
writer.     The  story,  which  is  not  a  story 
either,    has    a   wonderful    quality.     Give 
my    warmest    love    and    fealty   to    Miss 
Jewett. 

"What  a  rare  visit  it  was  to  your  high 
perch,  with  -  -  and  Miss  Cochrane  and 
the  ever  memorable  lunch  with  Dr. 
Holmes  and  Mr.  Ho  wells.  It  almost 
makes  me  long  to  be  eighty-four.  Do 
you  suppose  we  shall  be  like  that,  that  wit 
will  be  born  so,  and  memory  so  survive? 
It  was  all  delightful,  the  three  days  there 
and  the  wonderful  country  and  the  charm 
ing  people,  and  I  never  again  shall  climb 
that  same  hill  with  you  and  Miss  Fearn. 
Such  things  are  not  repeated. 

"Lady  Edward  Fitzmaurice  did  not 
[165] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

come  yesterday,  but  is  expected  this  after 
noon,  any  moment  now.  So  I  must  go 
down  and  put  on  my  noble  manners  if  I 
can  find  them. 

"Yours  affectionately." 

Meanwhile  several  small  books  were 
published  made  up  of  papers  previously 
printed  in  Harper's  Magazine.  In  1884 
he  had  associated  himself  with  that  mag 
azine,  first  as  editor  of  the  Drawer  and 
later  of  the  Study,  and  kept  up  the  con 
nection  until  1898,  two  years  before  his 
death.  Between  the  years  1896  and 
1898,  with  the  assistance  of  his  brother, 
Mr.  George  Warner,  he  edited  the  large 
volumes  of  the  compendium  called  "The 
World's  Best  Literature,"  writing  some 
[166] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

of  the  prefaces  and  introductions,  which 
showed  his  own  matured  literary  tastes 
and  judgments.  This  collection  really 
represents  his  own  idea  of  the  leaders  in 
English  letters,  which  is  far  from  being 
the  case  with  every  collection  issued  un 
der  the  segis  of  a  distinguished  name.  In 
1899  also  he  had  published  a  book  with  an 
historical  flavour,  called  "The  People  for 
Whom  Shakespeare  Wrote,"  and  this 
book,  with  the  exception  of  a  collection 
of  essays,  "The  Relation  of  Literature 
to  Life,"  closed  the  long  series  of  his 
labours. 

"The  Relation  of  Literature  to  Life" 

carries  a  peculiar  interest  apart  from  style 

and  thought  when  looked  at  from  our 

present    standpoint,    that    of    the    indi- 

[167] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

yidual  and  the  purpose  of  his  life.  The 
autumn  is  near,  but  with  no  touch  of 
decadence,  only  ripeness  and  calm.  The 
close  relation  of  all  "genuine  enduring 
literature"  to  human  life  is  here  pointed 
out  with  the  persuasion  of  a  man  who 
has  lived  by  the  knowledge  of  an  almost 
unacknowledged  truth  and  is  now  re 
hearsing  it  in  plain  speech.  "The  most 
remunerative  method  of  studying  a  litera 
ture,"  he  says,  "is  to  study  the  people  for 
whom  it  was  produced,"  and  illustrations 
of  this  are  drawn  by  him  in  a  course  of 
lectures  previously  delivered  from  the 
Greek,  French,  and  English  literatures. 
"English  readers  can  test  this,"  he  writes, 
"by  taking  up  their  Shakespeare  after  a 
thorough  investigation  of  the  customs, 
[168] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

manners,  and  popular  life  of  the  Eliza 
bethan  period." 

Where  else  can  we  turn  to  find  a  man 
whose  life  was  frankly  devoted  to  letters, 
always  defending  his  guild  and  shelter 
ing  the  race  of  literary  men  behind  so 
brave  a  shield?  Other  men  of  letters 
have  been  proud  of  their  profession  and 
content  with  the  high  place  which  some 
of  them,  presuming  for  a  moment  they 
are  men  of  genius,  have  attained.  But 
genius  is  not  to  be  classified.  Charles 
Warner  was  speaking  of  the  necessity 
of  literature  and  of  the  lofty  eminence 
of  the  profession  apart  from  individuals. 
He  says:  "If  the  world  in  which  you  live 
happens  to  be  the  world  of  books,  if  your 
pursuit  is  to  know  what  has  been  done 
[169] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
and  said  in  the  world,  to  the  end  that 
your  own  conception  of  the  value  of  life 
may  be  enlarged,  and  that  better  things 
may  be  done  and  said  hereafter,  this  world 
and  this  pursuit  assume  supreme  impor 
tance  in  your  mind.  But  you  can  in  a 
moment  place  yourself  in  relations — you 
have  not  to  go  far,  perhaps  only  to  speak 
to  your  next  neighbour — where  the  very 
existence  of  your  world  is  scarcely  rec 
ognised.  .  .  .  You  will  speedily  be 
aware  how  completely  apart  from  human 
life  literature  is  held  to  be,  how  few  peo 
ple  regard  it  seriously,  as  a  necessary  ele 
ment  in  life."  He  then  compares  the 
great  labours  of  men  of  affairs,  the  build 
ing  of  towns  and  manufactures  in  in 
credibly  short  spaces  of  time  upon  lands 
[170] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

where  forests  grew  a  few  months  earlier 
and  speaks  of  the  marvellous  exhibition 
of  energy  which  has  wrought  such  results. 
He  inquires:  "Why  encounter  these  diffi 
culties?  The  men  are  not  consciously 
philanthropists.  .  .  .  They  enjoy  no 
doubt  the  feeling  of  leadership,  but  they 
embark  in  their  enterprise  in  order  that 
they  may  have  the  position  and  luxury 
that  increased  wealth  will  bring.  .  .  . 
The  observation  of  this  phase  of  modern 
life  is  not  in  the  least  for  purposes  of 
satire  or  of  reform.  .  .  .  We  are  in 
quiring  how  fully  this  conception  of  life 
is  divorced  from  the  desire  to  learn  what 
has  been  done  and  said  to  the  end  that 
better  things  may  be  done  and  said 
hereafter,  in  order  that  we  may  under- 
[171] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

stand  the  popular  conception  of  the  insig 
nificant  value  of  literature  in  human  af 
fairs."  Warner  then  quotes  what  Plato 
says  upon  this  subject  in  the  Laws,  where 
the  Athenian  stranger  remarks  that  one 
cause  of  decay  of  defence  in  a  state  is  the 
love  of  wealth,  which  wholly  absorbs  men 
and  never  for  a  moment  allows  them  to 
think  of  anything  but  their  private  pos 
sessions.  .  .  .  The  conclusion  of  Plato 
is  that  we  ought  not  to  pursue  any  occu 
pation  to  the  neglect  of  that  for  which 
riches  exist.  "I  mean,"  he  says,  "soul 
and  body,  which  without  gymnastics  and 
without  education  will  never  be  worth 
anything;  and  therefore,  as  we  have  said 
not  once  but  many  times,  the  care  of 
riches  should  have  the  last  place  in  our 
thoughts." 

[172] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

"The  majority  of  mankind,"  he  con 
tinues,  "reverses  this  order  of  interests, 
and  therefore  it  sets  literature  to  one  side 
as  of  no  practical  account  in  human  life. 
More  than  this,  it  not  only  drops  it  out 
of  mind,  but  it  has  no  conception  of  its 
influence  and  power  in  the  very  affairs 
from  which  it  seems  to  be  excluded.  .  .  . 
Just  as  it  is  that  virtue  saves  the  state,  if 
it  be  saved,  although  the  majority  do  not 
recognise  it,  and  attribute  the  salvation 
of  the  state  to  energy,"  etc.,  .  .  .  "so 
it  is  that  in  the  life  of  generations  of  men 
considered  from  an  ethical  and  not  from 
a  religious  point  of  view,  the  most  potent 
and  lasting  influence  for  a  civilisation 
that  is  worth  anything,  ...  is  that 
which  I  call  literature." 

In  this  sentence  we  find  the  keynote  of 
[173] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
Charles  Dudley  Warner's  life — the  rea 
son  why  we  are  led  to  speak  of  him  and 
remember  him  as  one  of  the  agents  toward 
the  better,  the  larger  life  of  our  land. 

"Literature,"  he  says  again,  "must 
have  in  it  something  of  the  enduring  and 
the  universal.  ...  In  books  of 
law,  theology,  politics,  medicine,  science, 
travel,  adventure,  biography,  philosophy, 
and  fiction  there  may  be  passages  that 
possess,  or  the  whole  contents  may  pos 
sess,  that  quality  which  comes  within  our 
meaning  of  literature.  There  must  be 
an  appeal  to  the  universal  in  the  race. 
.  .  .  The  subject  of  a  production  does 
not  always  determine  the  desired  quality 
which  makes  it  literature.  ...  A 
biography  may  contain  all  the  facts  in 
[174] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

regard  to  a  man  and  his  character  ar 
ranged  in  an  orderly  and  comprehensible 
manner,  and  yet  not  be  literature;  but  it 
may  be  so  written,  like  Plutarch's  'Lives' 
or  Defoe's  'Account  of  Robinson  Crusoe,' 
that  it  is  literature  and  of  imperishable 
value  as  a  picture  of  human  life,  as  a  sat 
isfaction  to  the  want  of  the  human  mind 
which  is  higher  than  the  want  of  knowl 
edge.  ...  It  may  be  weighty  and 
profound;  it  may  be  light,  as  light  as  the 
fall  of  a  leaf  or  a  bird's  song  on  the 
shore;  it  may  be  the  thought  of  Plato 
where  he  discourses  of  the  character  neces 
sary  in  a  perfect  state,  or  of  Socrates, 
who,  out  of  the  theorem  of  an  absolute 
beauty  and  goodness,  greatness,  and  the 
like,  deduces  the  immortality  of  the  soul; 
[175] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

or  it  may  be  the  love  song  of  a  Scotch 
ploughman,  something  ministering  to  a 
need  in  human  nature  higher  than  a  need 
for  facts,  for  knowledge,  for  wealth." 
Warner  had  set  himself  no  easy  task 
to  define  why  literature  not  of  knowl 
edge  alone,  but  of  a  higher  power,  was 
a  force  greater  than  that  of  physical 
forces.  But  he  never  relaxed  in  his 
noble  endeavour  to  make  this  truth  clear, 
and  while  he  regrets  that  the  natural 
division  of  occupations  should  cause  a 
want  of  sympathy  between  the  followers 
of  the  various  pursuits  existing  in  the 
world,  and  while  he  recognises  the  disap 
pointing  fact,  occasionally  met,  of  the 
"arrogance  of  culture,"  he  still  makes  the 
truth  evident  that  "the  production  of  the 
[176] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
poet  is  as  necessary  to  universal  men  as 
the  atmosphere.  .  .  .  We  all  know 
it  is  true,  true  in  our  individual  conscious 
ness,  that  if  a  man  be  known  as  a  poet  and 
nothing  else,  if  his  character  is  sustained 
by  no  other  achievement  than  the  produc 
tion  of  poetry,  he  suffers  in  our  opinion 
a  loss  of  respect.  And  this  is  only  recov 
ered  for  a  man  after  he  is  dead  and  his 
poetry  is  left  alone  to  speak  for  his  name. 
.  .  .  This  popular  estimate  of  the 
poet  extends  also,  possibly  in  less  degree, 
to  all  the  producers  of  the  literature  that 
does  not  concern  itself  with  knowledge. 
It  is  not  our  care  to  inquire  further  why 
this  is  so,  but  to  repeat  that  it  is  strange 
that  it  should  be  so  when  poetry  is, 
and  has  been  at  all  times,  the  universal 
[177] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
solace  of  all  peoples  who  have  emerged 
out  of  barbarism,  the  one  thing  not  su 
pernatural,  and  yet  akin  to  the  super 
natural,  that  makes  the  world,  in  its  hard 
and  sordid  conditions,  tolerable  to  the 
race.  For  poetry  is  not  merely  the  corn- 
fort  of  the  refined  and  the  delight  of 
the  educated;  it  is  the  alleviator  of  pov 
erty,  the  pleasure-ground  of  the  igno 
rant,  the  bright  spot  in  the  most  dreary 
pilgrimage.  .  .  . 

"The  hard  conditions  of  the  lonely  New 
England  life,  with  its  religious  theories 
as  sombre  as  its  forests,  .  .  .  would 
have  been  unendurable  if  they  had  not 
been  touched  with  the  ideal  created  by 
the  poet.  There  was  in  creed  and  pur 
pose  the  vitality  that  creates  a  state,  and, 
[178] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

as  Menander  says,  the  country  which  is 
cultivated  with  difficulty  produces  brave 
men;  but  we  leave  out  an  important  ele 
ment  in  the  lives  of  the  Pilgrims  if  we 
overlook  the  means  they  had  of  living 
above  their  barren  circumstances.  I  do 
not  speak  only  of  the  culture  which  many 
of  them  brought  from  the  universities,  of 
the  Greek  and  Roman  classics,  and  what 
unworldly  literature  they  could  glean 
from  the  productive  age  of  Elizabeth 
and  James,  but  of  another  source,  more 
universally  resorted  to,  and  more  power 
ful  in  exciting  imagination  and  emotion, 
and  filling  the  want  in  human  nature  of 
which  we  have  spoken.  They  had  the 
Bible,  and  it  was  more  to  them,  much 
more,  than  a  book  of  religion,  than  a 
[179] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

revelation  of  religious  truth,  a  rule  for 
the  conduct  of  life,  or  a  guide  to  heaven. 
.  .  .  It  opened  to  them  a  boundless 
realm  of  poetry  and  imagination.  .  .  . 
The  Bible  is  the  best  illustration  of  the 
literature  of  power,  for  it  always  con 
cerns  itself  with  life,  it  touches  it  at  all 
points.  And  this  is  the  test  of  any  piece 
of  literature — its  universal  appeal  to  hu 
man  nature."  .  .  . 

Charles  Dudley  Warner's  love  for  his 
kind,  for  life,  for  the  varied  resources  and 
beauty  in  human  nature  developing  in 
endless  and  unexpected  forms,  led  him,  as 
we  have  seen,  far  and  wide,  but  every 
thing  was  focussed  in  his  central  idea  of 
the  "relation  of  literature  to  life."  His 
constant  study,  excepting  the  few  early 
[180] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

years  given  to  the  law,  was  in  pondering 
the  method  of  saying  what  he  believed 
could  help  the  world  in  the  simplest  and 
clearest  style.  "I  have  learned,"  he  said, 
"that  the  most  effective  word-painting,  as 
it  is  called,  is  the  simplest. 
In  those  moments  when  we  have  a  clear 
vision  of  life  that  which  seems  to  us 
most  admirable  and  desirable  is  the  sim 
plicity  that  endears  to  us  the  idyl  of 
Nausicaa."  .  .  . 

Whatever  his  labour  might  be  by  the 
way,  whether  for  prisons,  for  the  negro, 
for  women,  for  schools,  for  hospitals,  the 
form  of  labour  possible  to  him  was  by 
pen  and  speech.  This  he  followed  for 
the  aggrandisement  of  letters.  In  no 
other  way,  he  believed,  can  the  people  be 
[181] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

so  surely  guided  to  higher  ends.  No  uni 
versity  work  for  the  training  of  news 
paper  men  and  editors  can  succeed  until 
they  have  grasped  one  and  all  this  primal 
idea  of  literature  as  the  surest  means  for 
the  education  of  the  people.  Only  by  per 
fecting  the  medium  can  this  be  achieved. 
The  irresistible  manner  of  saying  is  born 
of  character. 

Warner's  faith  in  literature  led  him  to 
be  a  prop  and  inciter  to  young  authors. 
Where  he  could  discern  real  talent  and 
character  he  was  ready  to  become  a  main 
stay.  Only  those  shivering  upon  the 
edge  of  a  plunge  into  the  sea  of  literary 
life  can  know  what  a  help  he  was  and 
what  happiness  his  hope  in  behalf  of  oth 
ers  gave.  His  advice  was  born  out  of 
[182] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
wide  experience.  There  is  a  record  of 
one  of  the  many  cases  of  his  helpfulness, 
where  he  writes  to  Sarah  Orne  Jewett, 
who  had  confided  to  him  the  actual  be 
ginning  of  a  story  which  he  had  first  sug 
gested  and  she  had  long  been  planning, 
"The  Tory  Lover";  "I  am  not  in  the  least 
alarmed  about  the  story,  now  that  you 
are  committed  to  it  by  the  printing  of  the 
beginning,  only  this,  that  if  you  let  the 
fire  slow  down  to  rest  for  a  week  or  so, 
please  do  not  take  up  any  other  work, 
but  rest  really.  Do  not  let  any  other 
theme  come  in  to  distract  your  silent 
mulling  over  the  story.  Keep  your  frame 
of  mind  in  it.  The  stopping  to  do  any  lit 
tle  thing  will  distract  you.  Hold  the  story 
always  in  solution  in  your  mind  ready  to 
[183] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
be  precipitated  when  your  strength  per 
mits.  That  is  to  say,  even  if  your  fires  are 
banked  up,  keep  the  story  fused  in  your 
mind."  He  wrote  also  to  the  same  friend : 
"The  Pointed  Firs  in  your  note  perfumed 
the  house  as  soon  as  the  letter  was  opened, 
and  were  quite  as  grateful  to  me  as  your 
kind  approval.  .  .  .  We  are  greatly 
rejoiced  to  know  that  you  are  getting  bet 
ter.  I  quite  agree  with  you  that  being 
sick  is  fun  compared  to  getting  well.  I 
want  to  see  you  ever  so  much  and  talk 
to  you  about  your  novel,  and  explain  to 
you  a  little  what  I  tried  to  do  with  Evelyn 
in  my  own.  It  seems  to  me  possible  to 
educate  a  child  with  good  literature  as 
well  as  bad;  at  least  I  tried  the  experi 
ment.  Most  affectionately  yours." 
[184] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

In  July,  1900,  he  wrote  to  the  present 
writer  from  Hartford:  "My  dear  Friend: 
I  have  been  told  that  there  is  to  be  a  little 
clearing1  out  of  our  house  and  a  temporary 
break-up  on  the  7th  or  9th  of  August. 
.  .  .  You  see  this  leaves  me  unprovided 
for,  and  out  in  the  heat.  I  can  no  longer 
\valk  my  five  to  ten  miles  a  day  with  my 
dog  Sam  in  the  region  of  Hartford.  My 
face  neuralgia  is  slowly  improving,  but 
I  have  not  much  liking  for  general  com 
pany,  in  which  I  should  have  to  explain 
myself.  It  has  been  suggested  that  you 
might  like  to  renew  your  invitation,  and 
take  me  in  for  a  little  at  this  time,  for 
the  sake  of  what  I  used  to  be,  or  what 
you  used  to  think  I  was.  I  may  also  stay 
a  little  with  Woodberry  at  Beverly.  If 
[185] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
S.  O.  J.  is  not  with  you  I  might  run 
up  to  South  Berwick  and  see  her.  I 
might  call  on  Howells  at  Annisquam. 
Perhaps  Aldrich  is  somewhere  stranded 
on  your  coast.  It  is  so  long  since  I  have 
seen  anybody,  that  I  have  quite  a  long 
ing  for  converse  with  the  unfortunate 
class  to  which  I  belong.  I  mean  the 
slaves  and  bond  servants  of  the  publish 


ers." 


Sunday,  August  19,  1900,  he  writes 
from  the  New  Marlboro  Inn:  "My  dear 
Friend:  .  .  .  It  is  really  a  heavenly 
Sunday  in  the  (illegible)  of  a  lovely  land 
of  high  pastures  and  woods,  and  the  clear 
est,  most  inspiring  air!  You  could  not 
make  a  better  day  if  you  had  the  recipe. 
We  have  been  wandering  all  the  morn- 
[186] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

ing  over  the  hills  before  lunch.  .  .  . 
I  reached  Great  Barrington  yesterday 
after  four.  The  distance  is  only  ten 
miles  here,  but  it  is  mostly  up  hill,  and  I 
had  two  hours  and  a  half  in  which  to 
enjoy  the  splendid  fields  and  the  general 
country  solitude.  .  .  .  It  is  one  of 
the  few  open  and  cheerful  and  secluded 
places  I  know." 

September  1st  brought  his  last  note  to 
the  same:  "Dear  Friend:  It  'looks  like' 
your  Massachusetts  Boards  would  have 
to  run  their  own  career  of  sentimentalism 
and  cant."  (This  refers  to  the  lack  of 
feeling  about  the  necessity  for  adopting 
proper  methods  of  reforming  criminals.) 
"The  sort  of  criminal  religion  they  are 
[187] 


CHARLES    DUDLEY    WARNER 
after  has  about  as  much  fruit  as  a  Judas 
Tree. 

"Well,  'lets'  you  and  S.  and  I  try  to 
be  good.  I  mean  to  go  to  Plymouth 
September  15th,  to  a  Mayflower  meet 
ing. 

"Yours  affectionately, 
"CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER." 

Each  friend  to  whom  he  wrote  famil 
iarly  must  remember  and  treasure  such 
notes  as  these.  As  one  re-reads  them, 
they  bring  back  his  voice,  his  smile,  the 
light  of  his  clear  eyes.  No  man  could 
have  been  dearer  to  his  friends,  and  it 
was  from  a  happy  hour  with  a  little  group 
of  them  that  he  went  suddenly  and  swiftly 
away  from  this  world.  There  was  to  be 
[188] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

in  his  life  no  winter  of  enforced  idle 
ness,  no  laying  down  of  his  armour  be 
fore  his  life's  end. 


[189] 


An  editorial  of  his  own  newspaper,  The 
Hartford  Courant,  has  come  into  the 
hands  of  the  writer,  just  as  this  brief 
memorial  must  close. 

THE    TWENTIETH    OF    OCTOBER,    1903 

"It  was  on  an  October  20 — three  years 
ago — that  Mr.  Warner  went  away  from 
us.  His  friends  have  not  even  begun  to 
forget  him ;  and  they  never  will.  As  they 
turn  the  pages  of  his  books,  or  find  them 
selves  in  some  place  dear  from  old  asso 
ciation,  the  familiar  voice  speaks  again, 
and  again  the  shrewd,  benignant  eyes 
look  into  theirs. 

"His  life  was  a  full  and  helpful  and 
[  190  ] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  .WARNER 
happy  life.  He  went  through  this  world 
with  an  alert  interest  in  everything  to  be 
seen  in  the  journey — observing,  compre 
hending,  and  interpreting.  His  tastes, 
like  his  sympathies,  were  very  catholic. 
He  was  a  good  comrade  and  audience  for 
John  Burroughs  in  the  woods ;  nature  was 
a  perpetual  delight  to  him,  and  for  his 
pet  haunts  here  in  New  England  he  had 
a  love  that  would  have  endeared  him  to 
St.  Francis,  but  Dr.  Johnson  would  have 
found  him  a  companion  to  his  liking  in  a 
ramble  down  Fleet  Street.  The  cities 
interested  him,  the  go-and-come  of  the 
streets,  the  shops,  the  politics,  the  talk 
of  the  clubs,  the  clamour  of  the  stock  ex 
change.  He  never  wearied  of  the  study 
of  men — their  ambitions,  struggles,  slips, 
[191] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

and  recoveries.  Nothing  human  was  dull 
to  him,  or  unimportant.  He  did  what  he 
could — and  not  by  any  means  in  his  books 
alone — to  make  the  world  a  saner,  whole- 
somer  world  for  men,  even  the  most  un 
fortunate  of  them,  to  live  in.  It  was  said 
by  somebody  that  nothing  else  in  him  was 
so  remarkable  as  this  all-around  interest, 
understanding,  and  sympathy.  But  what 
his  friends  remember  most  vividly  and 
thankfully  is  his  friendliness. 

"Emerson,  many  years  ago,  put  into 
words  his  idea  and  ideal  of  friendship,  as 
follows : 

"  'It  is  for  aid  and  comfort  through  all 

the  relations   and   passages   of  life   and 

death.     It    is    fit    for   serene    days,    and 

graceful  gifts,  and  country  rambles,  but 

[192] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

also  for  rough  roads  and  hard  fare,  ship 
wreck,  poverty  and  persecution.  It  keeps 
company  with  the  sallies  of  the  wit  and 
the  trances  of  religion.  We  are  to  dig 
nify  to  each  other  the  daily  needs  and 
offices  of  man's  life,  and  embellish  it  by 
courage,  wisdom,  and  unity.' 

"The  friendship  of  Charles  Dudley 
Warner  was  of  that  staying,  sufficing 
quality.  It  measured  up  to  the  Emerson 
tests." 

Any  account  of  such  a  newspaper  editor 
as  Charles  Dudley  Warner  would  be 
sadly  at  fault  without  a  fuller  account  of 
his  stewardship  in  that  direction  than  it 
has  been  the  writer's  power  to  give  un 
aided;  therefore  the  subjoined  letter  was 
[193] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

gratefully  received  from  his  successor  in 
editorship,  Mr.  Charles  Hopkins  Clark, 
who  came  a  very  young  man  into  the 
Courant  office  and  into  Mr.  Warner's 
closest  friendship: 

"I  am  very  glad  to  send  you  a  little 
something  about  Mr.  Warner,  though  I 
am  painfully  aware  that  it  will  be  inade 
quate.  One  of  my  great  regrets  is  that 
I  did  not  keep  any  journal  or.  other 
memorandum  to  record  some  at  least  of 
the  innumerable  wise  and  clever  sayings 
which  came  so  spontaneously  into  his 
every-day  conversation.  The  whole  room 
seemed  to  sparkle  when  he  came  into  it. 

"I  worked  in  one  capacity  or  another 
under  him  on  the  Hartford  Courant  for 
[194] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

about  thirty  years,  and  it  is  mortifying 
not  to  be  able  to  say  more,  and  more  defi 
nitely,  of  one  so  vividly  and  fondly  re 
membered.  Mr.  Warner  was  the  best 
all-around  newspaper  man  I  ever  met. 
He  had  made  his  way  up  from  exchange 
editor  at  $800  a  year,  and  he  knew  the 
practical  side  of  the  work,  and  he  had  a 
clear  notion  of  just  how  each  department 
should  be  conducted  and  what  a  news 
paper  should  be.  His  editorial  policy, 
often  emphasised  to  his  younger  asso 
ciates,  was  'Be  sure  you  are  right  and 
then  don't  worry.  You  may  be  in  the 
minority  at  first,  but  not  for  long.'  He 
had  a  cheerful  optimism  in  practice,  al 
though  he  sometimes  talked  despondently 
of  the  drift  of  things.  His  sense  of  news 
[195] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
was  keen  and  sure.  'Why  didn't  you 
have  something  in  the  paper  to-day,'  he 
asked,  'about  that  matter  we  were  talk 
ing  of  yesterday?'  'Oh,'  was  the  reply, 
'I  did  not  think  it  would  interest  people.' 
'It  interested  us,  didn't  it?'  he  went  on, 
'and  aren't  we  people?  What  interests 
us  will  interest  others,  and  it  is  what  in 
terests  them  that  people  want  to  read.' 

"He  wrote  with  the  utmost  ease  and 
had  the  largest  fund  of  general  informa 
tion  at  hand,  and  the  widest  range  of  in 
terests,  of  all  the  men  I  have  known.  He 
was  especially  recognised  in  those  articles 
that  were  more  or  less  essaistical  and  in 
which  his  delicious  humour  had  a  chance 
to  play.  But  he  wrote  also  on  occasions 
the  most  virile  and  strenuous  political  ed- 
[196] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

itorials.  Often  when  his  partner  and  fel 
low-editor,  General  Hawley,  would  come 
home  after  a  long  absence,  people  drop 
ping  into  the  office  would  say  they  were 
glad  to  see  'Hawley's  vigorous  pen  at 
work  again,'  while,  in  fact,  what  they  had 
noticed  was  another  of  Mr.  Warner's 
leaders.  His  style  of  writing  adapted 
itself  to  his  theme.  He  did  his  work  and 
then  moved  along  to  the  next  thing  and 
did  not  carry  all  the  time  in  mind  what 
he  had  done.  I  recall  that  once,  at  my 
urgent  request,  when  Mrs.  Stowe  was  re 
ported  dying,  he  wrote  an  editorial  about 
her  to  be  published  at  her  death.  She  ral 
lied  and  lived  months,  perhaps  years. 
When  finally  the  article  appeared  he  was 
at  the  South.  On  receiving  his  C  our  ant 
[197] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
he  wrote  home  expressing  his  hearty  ap 
proval  of  the  editorial,  adding  that  there 
were  things  in  there  that  he  had  always 
intended  to  say  when  the  time  came.  He 
was  quite  curious  to  know  who  the  author 
was.  Whenever  anything  appeared  in 
the  paper  which  he  particularly  liked  it 
was  his  way  to  find  who  wrote  it  and  to 
tell  him  that  he  liked  it  and  why.  He 
was  especially  considerate  of  the  young 
men  and  always  ready  to  encourage  them. 
His  cheery  companionship  belonged  to 
all  of  us  in  the  office.  Long  after  his 
active  work  on  The  Courant  ceased,  in 
deed,  up  to  and  including  the  day  of  his 
death,  he  came  there  regularly,  ran  his 
eye  over  the  papers,  and  discussed  the 
news  of  the  day.  His  kindly,  simple,  and 
[198] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

lovable  nature  put  all  at  ease  who  came 
in  contact  with  him,  and  his  ready  wit, 
his  broad  views  of  life,  his  quick  and 
true  judgment,  not  only  entertained  but 
instructed  them.  His  personality  per 
vaded  the  whole  office.  Not  only  did  he 
establish  the  standard  for  all  who  worked 
under  him,  but  he  was  the  standard  him 
self." 

In  the  November  number  of  Harper's 
Magazine  after  Mr.  Warner's  death  Mr. 
Howells  published  in  the  "Easy  Chair" 
the  following  tribute  in  token  of  their 
friendship : 

"Nothing  in  a  man's  life  can  so  abso 
lutely  free  us  concerning  him  as  its  end; 
[199] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
and  if  we  then  grieve  that  our  praise  can 
no  longer  soothe  the  dull,  cold  ear,  we 
are  safe  in  knowing  that  we  cannot  wound 
it.  We  are  liberated  to  the  wish  of  see 
ing  him  as  he  was,  and  we  are  as  far 
from  the  wish  to  overpraise  his  work  as 
to  censure  it.  More  than  ever  in  that 
solemn,  sudden  absence  we  feel  the  gro- 
tesqueness  of  insincerity,  and  could  wish 
to  speak  of  it  as  it  would  wish  to  speak 
of  itself,  if  it  did  not  fear  being  misun 
derstood.  But  the  friend  whom  we  all 
lost,  whether  we  personally  knew  him  or 
not,  in  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  was  a 
man  little  given  to  speaking  of  himself. 
Some  literary  men  have  the  habit,  not  less 
modestly  than  those  who  have  it  not,  of 
talking  freely  of  their  work,  both  in  and 
[200] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

out  of  print;  but  it  would  not  be  easy 
to  find  in  his  work  any  expression  of  his 
sense  of  it.  No  doubt  he  knew  how  to 
value  it  rightly,  and  he  was  personally 
present  in  it  in  uncommon  measure.  It 
was  his  voice  speaking  all  the  more  di 
rectly  for  himself  because  of  the  trans 
parent  mask  he  put  on  in  those  little 
humourous  studies  which  first  charmed  us ; 
it  was  always  his  voice  we  heard  in  what 
he  wrote  and  it  appealed  to  each  of  us 
as  from  the  heart  of  his  own  personality. 
The  true  form  of  his  art  was  at  its  best 
in  the  series  of  essays  which  preceded  his 
fiction.  'My  Summer  in  a  Garden,' 
'Backlog  Studies,'  'Saunterings,'  'Adi 
rondack  Sketches,'  'Baddeck,.  and  That 
Sort  of  Thing' — it  is  a  pleasure  to  name 
[201  ] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

them  over,  and  for  their  old  lovers  each 
name  will  have  a  glimmer  of  the  opales- 
cence  which  filled  the  things  themselves 
with  lovely  light.  They  were  of  the 
quality  which  we  felt  in  his  fiction,  but 
felt  not  so  intimately,  and  in  his  effort 
to  make  it  felt  intimately  there  was  the 
defect  of  this  fiction.  He  had  not  the 
novelist's  habit  of  using  experience  imag 
inatively,  structurally.  He  had  rather 
the  essayist's  habit  of  using  it  illustra 
tively,  even  decoratively,  and  in  a  time  of 
far  greater  novelists  it  was  his  distinction 
to  be  the  first  essayist  among  the  rarest 
few.  In  one  little  book  of  his,  which  is 
still  an  essay,  he  made  perhaps  his  most 
original  contribution  to  literature.  It 
would  be  idle  to  say  that  no  one  else  could 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

have  written  anything  like  'Being  a  Boy,' 
but  it  is  certain  that  no  one  else  had,  when 
he  conceived  of  an  autobiographic  study 
of  all  boyhood,  which  should  be  as  true 
to  every  other  man's  sense  of  his  own  boy 
hood  as  it  was  to  the  author's,  and  which 
as  it  were  dramatised  the  nature  of  a  boy. 
In  its  sense  of  character  still  in  the  bud 
it  has  not  been  equalled,  if  it  ever  will  be. 
"No  one  has  seen  life  more  kindly  and 
wisely.  His  range  was  very  wide,  and 
he  wrote  with  delightful  intelligence  of 
other  lands  and  peoples,  as  different  from 
one  another  as  they  were  alien  to  ours. 
His  travels  were  of  the  mood  which  every 
educated  American  will  recognise  as  hav 
ing  been  his  own  in  the  period  of  moral 
expansion  following  the  great  war, 
[203] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
when  we  were  beginning  to  judge  the 
Old  World  without  provincial  arrogance 
or  colonial  servility.  They  are  full  of 
young  pleasure  in  the  Continent  and 
Orient  which  cannot  be  known  to  a  gen 
eration  grown  over-familiar  unto  both; 
and  this  mood,  which  may  make  them 
chiefly  interesting  hereafter  to  the  stu 
dent  of  their  period,  is  strongly  character 
istic  of  the  essays  which  it  will  establish 
as  a  part  of  literature.  No  man  who  is 
not  thoroughly  of  his  own  time  can  sur 
vive  it,  and  Charles  Dudley  Warner  was 
conspicuously  a  New  England  American 
of  the  decades  between  1870  and  1890, 
which  witnessed  his  greatest  literary  ac 
tivity.  He  first  made  himself  known  as 
a  gentle  humourist  of  a  certain  whimsical, 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

dry  quaintness,  and  then,  when  we  were 
all  in  love  with  him  for  this,  we  found 
him  a  humanist  of  a  temper  as  fine. 
While  we  were  still  smiling  with  him  at 
the  rich  drolling  in  'A  Fight  With  a 
Bear'  and  'Killing  a  Trout,'  we  found  our 
eyes  wet  with  the  pathos  he  invoked  in 
'Hunting  the  Deer.'  It  may  be  forgot 
ten  how,  without  acquiring  the  evil  fame 
of  a  reformer,  he  went  on  to  self-sacri 
ficing  labours  in  various  philanthropies; 
but  what  he  did  for  mankind  in  litera 
ture,  to  console  or  to  move  it,  will  not  be 
forgotten  if  any  American  work  of  our 
time  is  to  become  an  English  classic.  No 
one  of  our  authors  except  Curtis  led  so 
much  the  life  of  a  public  man,  but  War 
ner  was  scarcely  thought  of  as  a  public 
[205  ] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
man  so  greatly  by  virtue  of  its  truest 
expression  was  his  life  that  of  a  literary 
man.  He  was  a  journalist,  an  economist, 
a  philanthropist;  he  remains  an  essayist, 
a  humourist,  an  artist  of  delicate  fibre,  of 
rare  temperament,  of  a  certain  charm, 
impossible  not  to  feel  peculiarly  his. 
When  people  were  once  tried  almost  be 
yond  endurance  by  the  most  exasperat 
ing  of  winters,  he  said,  'Everybody  is  talk 
ing  about  the  weather,  why  doesn't  some 
body  do  something?'  And  this,  with  its 
subtle  irony  of  human  futility,  is  perhaps 
one  of  the  most  representative  examples 
of  his  wit,  but  this  humour  was  an  aroma 
which  interfused  all  his  thought,  and  filled 
his  page  with  the  constant  surprise  of  its 
presence.  He  was,  in  everything  he 
[  206  ] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
wrote,  of  a  high  ideal.  He  thought  liter 
ature  worthy  of  the  best  he  could  do ;  and 
all  that  he  did  was  in  the  interest  of  those 
more  refined  good  morals  which  we  call 
good  manners;  it  was  polite  literature. 
His  artistic  conscience  was  of  one  make 
with  his  ethical  conscience,  and  whether 
he  was  always  aware  of  it  or  not,  he  ad 
dressed  his  reader  from  both.  What  he 
wrote,  that  he  was;  and  to  praise  him  as 
one  from  whose  books  no  one  could  rise 
with  a  base  or  rude  thought  would  be  an 
offence  to  his  memory,  so  much  was  his 
literature  a  positive  counsel  of  civility,  so 
far  was  it  above  the  poor  virtues  of  omis 
sion.  It  remains,  and  will  remain,  an 
influence  for  right  behaving  through 
right  feeling  and  thinking.  No  one  to 
[207] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 

whom  letters  are  dear  could  help  feeling 
an  intimate  loss  in  the  sudden  passing  of 
that  fine  and  clear  intelligence;  and  if  it 
was  one's  fortune  to  be  long  associated 
with  it,  through  the  same  years  of  aspira 
tion  and  endeavour,  one  must  feel  some 
thing  of  his  own  life  gone  out  of  him 
with  it.  It  is  not  for  such  a  one  to  put 
on  the  prophet  and  declare  his  future,  and 
it  is  not  the  present  affair  to  fix  Charles 
Dudley  Warner's  place  in  literature.  It 
is  more  useful  to  ascertain  its  place  in 
him  and  to  realise  that  whatever  the 
beauty  and  sweetness  of  his  literatures  it 
was  the  fainter  and  slighter  image  of  the 
beauty  and  sweetness  of  his  nature." 

Surely  no  recapitulation  of  Warner's 
[208] 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 
life  could  be  more  perfectly  made.  By 
one  of  those  singular  accidents,  as  we 
are  pleased  to  call  them,  the  little  line  of 
books  called  "Lives  of  Contemporary 
Men  of  Letters"  was  projected  shortly 
before  his  death  and  his  name  was  one  of 
the  first  proposed  to  lead  the  series.  Con 
temporary  he  ever  was  and  will  be  until 
all  those  who  have  known  him  are  at  rest, 
for  he  was  a  man  as  the  prophet  says, 
"such  as  man  shall  be,  an  hiding  place 
from  the  wind  and  a  covert  from  the 
tempest." 

THE    END 


[209] 


CONTEMPORARY  MEN  OF  LETTERS  SERIES 
WILLIAM  ASPENWALL  BRADLEY,  EDITOR 


THE  purpose  of  this  series  is  to  provide  brief  but  compre 
hensive  sketches,  biographical  and  critical,  of  living  writers 
and  of  those  who,  though  dead,  may  still  properly  be  re 
garded  as  belonging  to  our  time.  There  is  a  legitimate 
interest  in  the  lives  of  our  contemporaries  that  is  quite  dis 
tinct  from  mere  personal  curiosity.  There  is  also,  in  spite 
of  the  obvious  limitations  of  contemporary  criticism,  a 
justifiable  ambition  to  arrive  at  some  final  estimate  of  the 
literary  production  of  our  age  in  advance  of  posterity.  It 
is  to  satisfy  so  far  as  possible  this  ambition  and  this  interest 
that  the  present  series  is  planned.  European  as  well  as 
English  and  American  men  of  letters  are  included,  so  as  to 
give  a  complete  survey  of  the  intellectual  and  artistic  life  of 
an  age  that  is  characteristically  cosmopolitan.  It  is  also 
often  called  a  decadent  age,  and  it  has  therefore  a  varied 
outlook  on  life.  The  diverse  and  often  conflicting  points  of 
view  that  we  thus  meet  with  in  modern  poets  and  prose 
writers  are  all  treated  intelligently  and  sympathetically  by 
writers  especially  qualified  in  every  instance,  although  the 
prevailing  temper  of  the  series  is  idealistic. 


McCLURE,  PHILLIPS  &  CO., 
141   Kast  Twenty-fifth  Street,  New  York. 

[OVER] 


IN  THE  SAME  SERIES 

WALTER    PATER 
BY  FERRIS  GREENSLET 

"  One  of  the  best  things  of  the  sort  that  we  know  of." 

New  York  Evening  Sun. 

"  A  thoroughly  sympathetic  and  penetrating  study." 

New  York  Independent. 

"  A  most  suggestive  and  stimulating  little  volume." 

Kansas  City  Star  and  Times. 

"A  piece  of  solid,  genuine  criticism." 

Boston  Transcript. 

"The  writer  has  handled  his  subject  with  rare  skill  and 
appreciation."  Current  Literature. 

"  Performs  a  service  for  which  the  lovers  and  students  of 
Pater  will  be  grateful."  Ethical  Record. 

"  In  a  compass  of  150  pages  the  author  has  given  a  more 
satisfying  portrait  and  estimate  of  his  subject  than  other 
critics  have  given  of  other  authors  in  600  pages." 

Baltimore  Sun. 
[ OVEU  ] 


IN  THE  SAME  SERIES 


BRET   HARTE 
BY    H.   W.   BOYNTON 


"  An  admirable  piece  of  condensed  biographical  writing 
,  .  .  a  truthful  study.  .  .  .  Far  and  away  the  best 
(study  of  Bret  Harte)  that  has  yet  come  to  us,  and  delight 
ful  reading  after  the  mass  of  uncritical,  gushing,  senti 
mental  biography."  N.  Y.  Outlook. 


**  Very  well  worth  reading,  especially  by  those  who  want 
a  fair  view  of  Harte  that  shall  not  make  them  dislike  him." 

The  Nation. 


Will  be  welcomed  by  all  admirers  of  the  poet." 

The  Churchman. 


"A  sane  little  work,  and  gives  in  brief  compass  just 
those  things  one  wants  to  know  about  this  famous  literary 
man,  for  the  treatment  is  sane  and  sympathetic." 

Christian  Herald. 

[ OVER  ] 


IN  PREPARATION 

WILLIAM  BUTLER  YEATS  AND  THE  IRISH 
LITERARY    REVIVAL 

BY  HORATIO  SHEAFE  KRANS 

AUTHOR    OF    "IRISH    LIFE    IN    IRISH    FICTION." 


CHARLES  ALGERNON  SWINBURNE 

BY  GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODHERRY 
Author  of  l<  American  Literature,"  "  Life  of  Hawthorne,"  "  Poems,"  etc. 


PRESS  COMMENTS  ON  THE  SERIES 
"  Promises  to  be  a  useful  as  well  as  a  beautiful  series. 
.     .     .     The  publishers  who  have  put  it  forth  have  done 
notably  good  work  in  bookmaking  of  late  and  these  vol 
umes     .     .     .     are  fitted  to  adorn  any  shelves. 

Providence  Journal. 

"  In  typographical  make-up  these  volumes  far  excel  the 
other  literary  monographs  on  the  market. " 

Philadelphia  Press. 

"  The  volumes  are  made  up  with  all  the  taste  which  dis 
tinguishes  the  books  that  come  from  their  publisher  and 
promise  well."  The  Independent. 

"Begins  not  only  well  but  brilliantly.  Its  future  issues 
will  receive  close  attention,  thanks  to  the  sterling  qualities 
of  its  first  two  issues.  N.  Y.  Mail  and  Express. 

"  These  handy  volumes  are  just  the  thing  for  busy  people 
who  like  to  know  something  about  the  men  of  letters  of  the 

passing  generation."     Church  Standard. 

[  OVER  ] 


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